CURRENT ISSUE
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spring 1997
Thresholds Wd
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture and Planning
Tobin Bridge, 4:00 am
massachusetts institute of technology
department of architecture and planning
Thresholds 14
spring 1997
Thresholds 14
spring 1997
editors
Robert Clocker and James O'Brien
advisory board
Stanford Anderson (MIT)
Ellen Dunham-Jones (MIT)
Mark Jarzombek (MIT), chair
Martin Bressani
Zeynep Celik
Jean-Louis Cohen
Diane Ghirardo
Hasan-Uddin Khan
Leo Marx
Mary McLeod
Ikem Okoye
Vikram Prakash
Mitchell Schwarzer
Kazys Varnelis
Cheri Wendelken
Catherine Wilkinson Zerner
Gwendolyn Wright
administrative assistance
Natasha Collins
Design and publication by Robert Clocker and James O'Brien.
Thanks to Lia Kiladis, June Williamson, Akiko Takenaka, Nina
Chen and Jason Danziger for editorial and proofreading
assistance. Printed by The Pressroom Printers, Gloucester,
Massachusetts. Body text set in Minion and Berthold Imago
type families; Threshohls key logo in Galhard italic. Digitally
published using Quark XPress.
editorial policy
Thresholdi is published and distributed biannually in
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Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of
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Opinions in Thresholds are those of the authors alone and do not represent
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© Copyright 1997. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ISSN: 1091-711X
contents
Introduction
Paul Carter 7
with Charles Andcnon
Ignasi de Sola-Morales 18
Christine McGrath
lames K. Casper
29
34
Against Projects
the Dis/appearance: waiting room collaboration
Present and Futures
Architecture in Cities
Consolidated Periphery
Commercial and Highway Interchange
Entropy and Surfaceness
Kristina Hill
41
Learning Where Not to Build
Panayiota Pyla 48
Azin Valy & Suzan Wines 57
Gray-areas in Green Politics
Reflections on the Modern Environmental Movement
Lt. Petrosino Park
James Wines
Mark Bain
60 Passages
Some Notes on the Fusion of Buildings and Landscape
70
Projectiles
Aspasia Maheras
Phillip Jones
76 Corporeal Consciousness
& The Permeability of Space Bath House
Industrial Nocturnes
photographs
82
author and illustration credits
Thresholds 14
a
o
Natural Languages
James O'Brien and Robert Clocker
What does it mean to design from tiie outside in?
What does it mean to buUd our landscape with an
understanding beyond the naive conceptions of
nature and the environment?
Cultures create metaphors through language and
storytelling to define their relationships with nature.
Within this context, institutions and practitioners
today are creatively probing into the traditional divi-
sions between architecture, urban design, and land-
scape 'architecture,' examining whether and how to
blur these divisions to develop a curriculum for land-
scape within architecture and planning departments.
A component of a funding effort by the Graham
Foundation, of which the current Landscape Initiative
at MIT is a part, this movement includes new
programs at the University of Virginia as well as the
University of Illinois at Chicago, where the term 'land-
scape urbanism' is emblematic of this new sensibility.
The relevance of finding meaningful correlations
among the disciplines is heightened in the light of a
new environmental consciousness that is reconsider-
ing the very terms nature and culture as integrated
concepts. If the two are intertwined, neither exists
purely. Conceptions of manmade' as the artificial and
of 'wilderness' as an unattainable original condition
no longer seem useful.
Within this conception, one finds easy parodies of the
separateness of the artificial and the natural, as well as
intellectual constructs of the total cohesion of man
and nature. Thresholds 14, however, investigates the
space between these abstractions with a clarity of its
own. Our authors — architects, artists, landscape archi-
tects, and writers — look to map this space through
workable concepts and constructs: artwork, planning,
building, and »iof building.
The photographs of Philip lones throughout this issue
presents metaphors for the terrain covered in its
pages. In each image, Jones reframes industrial land-
scapes to create a haunting ambiguity as to whether it
is nature or culture that is in advance or retreat.
The visual artist Paul Carter describes a collaborative
project with artist Charles Anderson for the Teufels-
berg, or Devil's Hill in Berlin. While metaphorically
doubled as a "dis/appearance," the proposed excava-
tion of this politically and historically charged site of
erasure couples the mental terrain with the physical.
Through analogies to the excavation of Homer's Troy
in Turkey, and the rapid mental bridging of recent
"terra nihilism" in the colonization of his homeland,
Australia, Carter recalls the importance of the physical
palimpsest built into sites throughout culture.
Ignasi de Sola-Morales casts a lexographic scrutiny
over the advance and retreat of nature/ culture and its
interplay with city planing. Within this essay, environ-
mentally inspired ideas of 'mutation' and 'flow' less
predictably mark important urban design considera-
tions, illustrating that city building falls sway to
greater morphologies than the mere building types
and shape grammars of urbanism. Currently these
changes are manifest in the strikingly vague spaces in
our cities and suburbs, where the complicity of the
natural and the cultural is brutally yet subtly divulged.
Both Christine McGrath and lames Casper are
concerned with the exterior surfaces of their struc-
tures as enriched by analogies drawn from their
particular sites and environmental views. For
McGrath, the scale and speed issues raised by the free-
way interchange inspire a site ordering which also re-
reads the 'environment' of consumerism. With
Casper, building skin technology takes cues form the
rules of natural processes, to physically integrate into
his building 'surface' in the form of building materi-
als. Natural weather patterns 'seed' change in his
facades, just as the dynamics of traffic seed the
signage surface of McGrath's interchange.
Kristina Hill and Panayiota Pyla address the larger
systems of which human action is only a part. Hill
contests terms such as site planning, sustainability,
and the notion of landscape design as a discrete act
until they emerge with meaning; described and
defined by methods, modes of analysis and built
examples. Her attitude demands projects that carry
formal beauty with results quantifiable within a
meaningful ecology. Pyla's work scrutinizes the very
notion of environmental consciousness itself Negoti-
ating among historical conceptions of environmental
consciousness, she argues for a synthesis between the
analysis/paralysis of postmodern relativism and the
over-ambitious globalizing assertions of modernist
environmental thought.
Azin Valy and Suzan Wines might very well be illus-
trating this sort of negotiation. They present a design
for a Brooklyn park with a dynamic infrastructure
that incorporates both the natural and the social
cycles of a locality. Seasonal variation in plant life
reciprocate with periodic, celebratory 'attachments' to
the structures.
Next, we find in James Wines a tireless voice exposing
the naivete of typical architectural conceptions of the
landscape as separate and additive to the act of build-
ing design. He explores meaning through integration
of the environment and building. His morphologies
and methodologies posit ecological consciousness as
an innovative building approach.
Mark Bain, a visual artist, sees the natural process of
decay itself as a generative, potentially positive force. He
pushes in another direction an idea shared with James
Wines and Kristina Hill; that the over-abundance of
building and development is an untenuated force today.
Bain fashions a splendidly blunt proposal for the
surreptitious 'seeding' of decay onto buildings. With
entropy as an intellectual field of knowledge in bio-
science, he follows some of the same guidelines as
James Casper, but via a radically different methodology.
Aspasia Maheras, like Azin Valy and Suzan Wines,
addresses the difficulties and environmental sacrifices
of living in the contemporary city. Occupying two
New York City rowhouse lots, her bathhouse project
interiorizes 'natural' needs and bodily awareness. The
'floor' becomes a continuous surface of water, the
'ceUing' an outlet to the sky. Between, the visitor
moves among ephemeral platforms, screens, and
bridges, subservient to the greater intJuence of the
sky/water elements. The body in the city is rejoined
with these elements quantifiably deficient in both the
urban experience and within our culture at large; thus
bodies become the third integral component of nature
in her interior landscape.
Maheras' notion, then, of 'corporeal consciousness'
leaves us where we began, in hopes of raising simulta-
neous awareness of how we can build the bodies
(nature) and minds (culture) of our cities and land-
scapes at once. We have no other choice actually, for
both will be built and unbuilt in each action and plan
that we take.
Tlnrslwlds 14
Against Projects
the Dis/appearance; waiting room collaboration
Paul Carter with Charles Anderson
A typology of projects would be interesting. It would reveal that even the projects
self-consciously designed for the salon des refuses of official urban and landscape
design mobilize a rhetoric of
Dis/appearance: waiting room #1-7 emblem of the series derived from H. throwing forward. Renegot- figure 1
Scfiliemann, Troy and Its Remains (first published 1875; reprinted 1976 by ... . ^ »■ i j- ■
.,,,,,, „,„ , . ,.„ , , , lations between spatial disci-
Arno Press. New mrW), plate XIB, facing p. 290. Six of the jars are shown. "^
and a seventh Cbroken) lies outside of the cut to the nght." Besides plines occur, as it were, on
embodying the dis/appearance paradox charactenstic of any archaeology. , , ft] A * •<■ n'ff
the jars appear as dependent Cor footless) objects, allied to the lie of the ' ''
land; as wine-storage jars they also figure rates of exchange, ent positions — diverse design
philosophies driven by antago-
nistic social and political visions — are adopted; but the conceptual language
remains translatable back into the very discourse of projective geometry that
characterizes the linear koine of public and corporate planning. In its presuppo-
sition of a tabula rasa environment (or in its engineering assumption that a flat-
tened ground is the condition of design, even if the intended effect is
picturesque), contemporary architecture and its disciplinary affiliates faithfully
perpetuate a mental topography going back to the Romans. The other of this
emptied-out space is an array of equally mythic landscape features such as the cut
or the abyss. In a familiar self-serving double-bind of Western logos, the abyss is
no sooner announced than it has to be bridged. The bridge, whose suturing of
formerly remote banks is so lovingly evoked by Heidegger, is also the drawbridge
of empire.
Tlnrsholds 14
viewing platform, West Berlin,
overlooking Berlin wall In no-
man's land. Found object,
research material for
dis/appearance: waiting room
#5. Pure expression of history
as waiting room. The abyss/
wall creates Its own other,
desire Is a visual drawbridge.
Ignoring the visual matrix, the
historical trace of occupation,
it overlooks the void.
Photograph: Charles Ar>derson,
1988.
Projections also project a temporal paranoia: the desire
to engineer a leap over the intervening space is driven by
deadlines, progress towards the
figure 2 vanishing point of permanence
(even if the market makes perma-
nence relative). Engineers and architects predicate their
vvfork on accelerating site amnesia — ignorance of land
rights can also speed up the process. The idea that
events might come to meet us is inconceivable; even
Robert Smithson's elegant quarries, drawing attention to
the temporality of time, could not slow things down. To
suggest that habitat design entails attention to rates of
spatio-temporal exchange — comparable, say, to the
growth and decay cycles of natural systems or even to
the assymetrical double-structure of human dialogue —
is almost to report the apocryphal. (It is telling that in
our project-based tradition the term apocrypha, mean-
ing 'properly hidden," rapidly came to signify 'ground-
less, false.') Waiting is imagined as the temporal
dimension of emptiness; the corollary of this abyssal
logic, buildings as stages waiting for time to begin,
explains the frenetic concern to make public spaces
functional, as if a pseudo-theatricality (or visual busy-
ness) can prevent the appearance of the new space being
seen for what it is, a disappearance in disguise.
Against this admittedly summary background artist
Charles Anderson and I are currently engaged in a seven-
part collaboration generically known
as dis/appearance: waiting room. figuee^ _
Writing recently about the scope of
our work, I identified its concern with "the direction and
notation of a social space where different, less brutal forms
of exchange (of passage, of met and missed desire) are
conceivable — and practicable," commenting, "it is exclu-
sively at home neither in the gallery nor in the abandoned
sites of the post-industrial city. Engaged in marking forms
of eventfulness, an art of poses, orientations, arrange-
ments, it is opportunistic, in a good sense parasitic on
environments in a state of disappearance. These it may be
said to colonize in a different way — in the process implic-
itly reflecting on the brutalism of urban renewal programs
that stigmatize the in-between as ruin, void..."
This description can be criticized for a rhetoric, a projec-
tive style, all too familiar from the inflated self-descriptions
architects and their writers give of their work. Still it inti-
mates our desire not to inhabit a moral high-ground, not
to occupy a post-colonial viewing-platform that pretends
to transcend previous ideological blindspots. The question
might be: how to ameliorate a history of colonialism? how
to advance differently? A different poetics of urban and
landscape design might involve an analogue practice, one
grounded in rates of exchange, where two terms punningly
alike but semantically diverse — chorography and choreog-
raphy— converge. This at any rate is the theory: what of
the practice?
The fifth of the dis/appearance: waiting rooms is devised
for the Teufelsberg or Devil's Hill on the south-west edge
of Berlin. After the fall of Berlin (1945) whatever the
heroic Trummerfrauen could not salvage from the wreck-
age and use to rebuild the "dead heart" of the city was
heaped up to form the Trummerberge or "rubble hUls", the
most dramatic of which is the Teufelsberg in the
Grunewald, a rich site of historical dis/appearance. There
is the obvious fact that over the years the Teufelsberg has
come to appear like a natural hill, thus concealing its
historical eruption out of human ruin. More
site specifically, there is the paradox that as
the site where the traumatic material
evidence of defeat was piled up and
concealed, the Teufelsberg has become a
commanding viewing platform, providing
Berlin with what it lacked before, "an excel-
lent view over the inner city." The hundred-
Dis/appearance: waiting room
#/. found wood, bandaging,
iodine, mercunchrome. Anna
Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne,
1995. An arrangement of
bandaged architectural moulds,
accompanied by a display of
stain patterns formed by first
and second generation "drop-
pings" of off-cut masking tape.
The catalogue essay evoked a
connection with Schliemann's
excavations at Troy: "Gaping
holes, footless bridges, half-
arches; ruins before their time,
queuing, the outsiders guess.
for a waiting cure-an ending
odd metre high Teufelsberg is par excellence a of the ending, separations
suture, elastic infancy again."
Photograph: Charles Anderson.
blindspot: only by not seeing what it is — the
act of historical amnesia it represents — can we
project ourselves towards a glorious, if crane-
punctuated, future.
These paradoxes of site/sight are systemic in our culture of
removal and reuse, and to point them out is not to under-
stand their meaning. The author of System and Structure,
Tony WUden, notes elsewhere, "In therapy, sometimes the
only way to begin to help people in a dangerous double bind
they cannot ordinarily escape is to explain how the double
bind works and then put them in a double bind they can get
out of." In this explanatory spirit we introduce a second
"rubbish hill", Hissarlik, the site of Homer's Troy situated in
north-west Turkey near the Dardanelles, and excavated by the
German millionaire and treasure-seeker, Heinrich Schlie-
mann. Schliemann's obsessive belief that Prima's Troy stood
on bedrock meant that he destroyed the later, covering strata
where, in fact, material support for Homer's poems might
have been found. And, as Schliemann, dug down, so "rubbish
hills" began to grow, volcano-like in the adjacent plain.
Nowadays the hill of Hissarlik resembles nothing so much as
an open-cut mine or a construction site.
Thresholds 14
CD
ireJ^
10 Schliemann and Berlin's imperial fantasy are closely related;
his so-called "Priam's Treasure" presented to
l4 the German people had the same symbolic
function as the Pergamene Altar (also wrested
from western Turkey): it seemed retrospectively to legitimate
German's imperial design, reflected not least in Bismarck's
expansive program of public works. But rather than explore
the imperial ideology subdy expressed in this archaeological-
architectural nexus, the practical point here is the superim-
position of Hissarlik on Teufelsberg. Our idea, very simply, is
to stage the excavation of Hisarlik on the plateau-summit of
the Teufelsberg, an event that would not only restage a dis/
appearance act but "explain" it. Our interest in superimposi-
tion might be thought childish. So it is: it is inspired by those
Children's Encyclopaedia superimpositions of the Eiffel
Tower on the Cheops Pyramid or the outline of Australia on
the map of the United States. But these fantasies of compari-
son have venerable roots — in, say, Neapolitan philosopher
Giambattista Vico's "poetic geography" whereby familiar
names and arrangements of names are transposed to new
countries, where they give the colonists an illusion of being
at home. Poetic transpositions of this kind are indeed inte-
gral to the imperial project. Superimposed on an already
named cultural landscape they stage another form of appear-
ance as disappearance.
Dis/appearance: wailing room #2. found space, photography, postcards.
Wollongong Art Gallery and Environs, 1995. Responding to the invitation
to make a "site-specific" installation, Anderson took a jigsaw of a local
landscape, which the Gallery was "completing" as an analogue of its
own fund-raising activities. As our catalogue text observed of this visual
re-colonization: "A BLACK HISTORY/ Where would it/ The missing
piece/ 1 mean/ Of the jigsaw./ Where would it fit in?/ A BLOT ON THE
LANDSCAPE."
Dis/appearance: waiting room
#5, 'Plan de la Barriere et du
Bureau de la Sante' from J.
Houel, Viagglo in Sicilia e a
Malta (orlg. in French, 1782;
reprinted in Italian as. 'Storia di
Napoli e della Sicilia' Societa
Editore. Palermo, 1977, table
CCLIV. "Our proposal is to
throw the Quarantine Station of
Malta over the site occupied by
the Australian Centre of
Contemporary Art [Melbourne]"
The multimedia installation is
planned to coincide with the
decommissioning of ACCA at
the end of 1998. A class of
"event-things" is intended for
this "museum of
dis/appearances": "double-
objects, which exist only as
relationships or conditions of
dialogue: ob|ects which lean,
espousing an other which is not
a compensatory prop but fulfills
a desire; part-objects which,
against the psychoanalytical
orthodoxy, are not incomplete
but possess multiple centers of
gravity." CDesign concept. 1996]
rrrn
******* 4 *-t-»'***'i^i.t'^M
The therapeutic value of our stiperimposition would consist in
revealing the ideological double-bind signified by our solidus,
that "/" of our term "dis/appearance." Staged on a hill without a
history, archaeological digs and a second Schliemannopolis of
associated structures at once identifies itself as a hoax. What can
it mean to excavate a site where no rules of stratification pertain,
where every part belongs to the same cataclysmic month or six
weeks? And, digging down, nothing hidden can be brought to
light, yet what lies everywhere on the surface of the site itself is
now uncomfortably remembered. The ephemeral architecture
and associated actions — chorography as choreography — not only
enact the ideological paradox of a history grounded in a rhetoric
of place predicated on the destruction of sites; it reveals the para-
dox as a "tangled contradiction," that is, as an artifact of imperial,
and projective, thinking. And it does this by an analogue process;
not by seeking to impose on the site another permanent solution,
but through an act of motivated mimicry.
Thresholds 14
CJ
12
Dis/appearance: waiting room #«, photographic technology and light
boxes, 1988-1997 Scheduled for Anna Schwartz Gallery. Melbourne,
1997. Nullbildung. the left-over images/non-images at the beginnings
and ends of slide-film, have no name in English. Where the conscious
photographic gaze closes its eye. the technological unconscious
surfaces, characteristically as a chromatically-banded boundary and a
remainder of tilted architecture. The significance of the ambiguous
status of these images is hinted at in the earlier catalogue note for
dis/appearance: wailing room # /: "This will be another ambiguity of
the dialectic, that it presupposes a shadow narrative of might-have-
beens': without this theatrical context, the narrative of the powerful
would have no meaning"
Readers patient enough to follow the argument thus far
may well be wondering what the status of the proposed
work is: will it, can it, be made in sitifi.
If not what is its status? Implicit in flgiue 6_
these questions is the assimilation of
the conception to a project. Interestingly, a particular
temporality attaches to this assimilation. Thus, the ques-
tion is in a sense: what are you waiting for? — a question
that already positions the work in relation to an architec-
tural paradigm, as a future event to be fitted into a pre-
existing space-time. One might recall Watt's meditation on
the circular painting in Beckett's novel: "Was the picture a
fixed and stable member of the edifice, like Mr Knott's bed,
for example, or was it simply a manner of paradigm, here
today and gone tomorrow, a term in a series, like the series
of Mr Knott's dogs, or the series of Mr Knott's men, or like
the centuries that fall, from the pod of eternity." The circu-
lar painting alludes to Vico's conception of historical
ricorsi, of periodic regressions to earlier stages of civiliza-
tion, a phenomenon Germany has been pre-eminent in
staging. But it might also be a metonymy of time in the
waiting room, which goes nowhere though constandy
dis/appearing.
The interest of the work for us consists of the implementation of the para-
digm. Our current intention is to mount an exhibition of the proposed earth
work in BerUn; to create
figure 7 offsite a model; and to
report on an event that may
or may not have happened.
Public reaction to the idea
would be assessed; it is
reasonable to suppose that
any attempt to create the work physically would encounter extreme opposition
and antagonism But conceptually, how would the work fare? It would enjoy
another circulation in the social imaginary, all the more enduring as a memory
site for not having existed.
Dis/appearance: waiting room # 2. found space, photography, postcards. Wollongong Art Gallery and
environs. 1995. The negative critique of a "site-specific" aesthetic that drew a picturesque veil over another,
no less fanciful, ideology that of real-estate driven economic recovery, was balanced by the evocation of an
alternative concept of locality: "It is the duplicating of folds that occupies us. the increase of the crease. A
territory represents a history of unfolding: but what mathematics will enable us to fold it up again? Blots
may contain within them the genealogy of folds; and their future unfolding may reveal that what we took to
be the final piece of the jigsaw is only an elementary fold." Photograph: Charles Anderson
13
o
14
Tlnnholdi 14
Viewing platform. Potsdamerplatz,
Berlin, 1994, research material for
Dis/appearance: waiting room #5.
Photograph: Charles Anderson.
Thresholds readers may wonder about the provenance of
our meditations, even wonder why two more-or-less resi-
dent Melbourne artists are focused on a trauma "so far
away." That could be part of it: the persistent myth of
Australia as atopia, placelessly outside history, which serves
neo-colonialist interests as efficiently now as it did two
hundred years ago. One reaction to what might be called
the institutionally endemic terra nihilism that made, and
continues to make, Australia's colonization possible (as it
made Schliemann's ransack of "Troy" possible) is an exag-
gerated localism. But the sentimentality of site-specificity
which the latter position produces is no less projective.
Our alternative position is to assert the historical and envi-
ronmental fact of rates of exchange, and what might follow
from that — different practices for creating interest, less
appropriative and progressive forms of translation.
15
Thresholds 14
16
Present and Futures
Architecture in Cities
Ignasi de Sola-Morales
TIjresholds 14
18
That architecture is one and the same
substance as the city is beyond ques-
tion. That the city is one single piece of
architecture, an idea put forward by
Leon Battista Alberti, is a more prob-
lematic assertion. For Alberti the city
was conceived as one great architecture
where every individual instance of
architecture within it could be
conversely understood as a city in
miniature. The hypothesis I put
forward here is rather more modest.
Today more than ever the basic
constituent parts of urban life tend to
fall completely outside the professional
work of the architect. The city is more
than its buildings and architecture.
Traditional architectural instruments
of analysis scarcely engage or have the
capacity to respond to these
constituent parts of the life of the
metropolis — transportation networks,
highways, spaces reserved for the logis-
tics of distribution, protected natural
areas, virtual spaces for communica-
tion and entertainment.
The current urban condition, charac-
terized by the diffuse but highly inter-
connected megalopolis which lean
Gottman spoke about as long ago as
the 1960s as well as the global cities
which Saskia Sassen speaks of now,
requires an entirely new approach
fi-om architects. This is true of both
classical and modernist attempts to
rethink the relation between architec-
ture and the city. The new and radical
nature of the urban condition of the
last thirty years has been pointed out
by Peter Hall, who writes that explo-
sive and vertiginous urban growth is
no longer occurring exclusively in the
developed world. In an equally power-
ful way it is happening in the underde-
veloped and developing countries with
startling speed.
My opinion is that the features and the
processes that belong to this new
urban world are too obvious for us to
turn a blind eye and deny them a city
charter of their own. These are tech-
niques and processes that already exist.
19
Thresholds 14
o
CO
05
20
that we currently operate with — blind,
fragmented practices if you like —
devoid of self-awareness or any critical
process, but practices by which life in
modern cities is organized.
Experts who are not trained as archi-
tects are the ones who control the
development of techniques relevant to
contemporary urban design. To these
experts the following are poorly under-
stood by the architect: motor ways,
airports, integrated transport systems,
interchanges, shopping centers, theme
parks, massive leisure areas, tourist
areas, self-built residential areas, mobile
homes, and homes for the non-tradi-
tional family. The demands of ideology
and mass consumption drive the reno-
vation and preservation of "heritage"
places, parks, and obsolete pre-indus-
trial spaces. The media then makes
multiple and imaginary replicas of this
milieu, creating and recreating virtual
realities no less Uved in than the physi-
cal realities of the big city. In many
cases these systems and phenomena are
foreign if not hostile to the entrenched
ways of thinking and acting common
to architects.
At this point 1 would like to suggest
five platforms, after the manner of the
thousand plateaus of which Deleuze
and Guattari speak, from which to see,
understand, problematize and evaluate
the basic constituent parts of contem-
porary urban conditions. With an eye
and an ear towards processes natural
and artificial, I am attempting to clas-
sify the many-faceted infrastructure of
the megalopolis.
mutation
The term mutation is intended to
characterize the type of change that
now occurs in cities. A random change
in the genetic material of the cell
produces alterations in one or more
hereditary characteristics, bringing
about a break in the inheriting mecha-
nisms: a mutation has been produced
which is a substantial alteration that
will affect both the morphology and the
physiology not only of the cell or the
organ, but of the organism as a whole.
What we are increasingly experiencing
in the city are processes of sudden
mutation, not compliant with the
notion of evolutionary transformation
and not conforming to a logical
process leading from planning to
building. Examples include the plan
for the reconstruction of the center of
Beirut, the expansion of the Pudong
area of Shanghai, the reunification of
Berlin, the renovation of the center of
Bucharest, and the patterns of grovrth
in Mexico City, Brasilia and ledda.
These are phenomena where neither
organicist-evolutionist criteria nor the
causal logic of the rationalist model
can be applied. When such high capac-
ity for accumulating massive develop-
ment capital and for rapid destruction
and rebuilding exists, thousands of
acres of existing urban fabric and
greenfield spaces will suffer mutations.
Compared to the logic of gradual
evolution, these mutations seem
sudden and unpredictable.
Designing for mutation, entering into
its centrifugal energy, requires juggling
a host of variables that cannot be
controlled except with efficient
management instruments. The plat-
form of mutation indicates the neces-
sity for open, interactive morphologies
in which minimum criteria are the
only laws organizing the rapid
processes by which things move from
one urban stage to another.
flow
The term flow is the second platform.
This concept refers to a shift in under-
standing movement in the city that
took place between the CIAM Athens
Charter in 1933 and Team X in the
1950s. This critique is exemplified by
Kahn's project for Philadelphia and the
Smithsons' proposals for Berlin. Flow
characterizes the shape and form of
motion: networks, meshes, conduits,
and staccato movements are recurring
figures in projects about flow. Motion
conceived in terms of flow signifies a
break from the Einsteinian space-time
used by the architectural avant garde of
the early Modern Movement. At the
fin-de-siede architecture is moving
towards the fundamental objective of
facilitating traffic flow and interchange
between different networks. This is so
not only in the conventional field of
transport — railway stations, ports and
21
Thresholds 14
o
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22
airports — but also in places where
there is an intersection of distribution
modes. Architecture has to be able to
plastically reconfigure its shape to be
receptive to all types and forms of
interchange.
habitation
A third platform concerns the form
that dwellings or residences take. I
propose calling this habitation. In
recent years it has often been said that
architecture has forsaken the problem
of the dwelling. In the exhibition and
catalogue entitled Iiitenmtional Prop-
erty, Yago Conde and Bea Goller
concluded that the commodity of
housing is designed and controlled
predominantly by free market forces.
The similarity between housing
models from various distant parts of
the world points to the legitimacy of
this view. This is so despite the para-
doxical fact that these markets have
been cultivated with extreme attention
to local and regional formal reper-
toires. The result is an injection of bits
of pseudo-identity into plans that
nevertheless remain homogenous.
The most innovative, valuable, and
avant-garde production of new
dwellings, on the other hand, are found
in unique, one-off types of housing
experimentation that are outside of, or
at least tangent to, the great mass
produced by the uniform housing
market. Homes for immigrants, for a
single individual, for transitory situa-
tions, for the homeless, the artist's
home, and the architect's own home
are today's favored testing ground for
experimentation. But in underdevel-
oped and developing countries the
problem of the dwelling remains a
centrally important social and political
problem. Intractable urban habitation
problems in these contexts are usually
tackled with a poverty of conceptual
thinking. I see this as a sign of the diffi-
culty of these innovative ideas to be
creatively applied to the problem of
urban housing.
container
A fourth area of attention concerns the
form that exchange takes. For this I
suggest the term container. In
consumer societies productive activity
depends intrinsically on the means of
exchange. Contact with consumer
goods requires a theater in which the
market "performance" can be acted
out. What are they like, these envelopes
in which the ritual of consumption
takes place, where the distribution of
desired gifts finds its worshippers
ready to sacrifice portions of their
accumulated wealth?
Containers are not always public, and
not exactly private. A museum, a
stadium, a shopping mall, an opera
house, an entertainment theme park,
an historical buUding protected so it
can be visited, a tourist attraction — all
these are containers. They are not
transparent, they are closed-in. The
"generalized separation" that Guy
Debord spoke of in Society of the Spec-
tacle is the basic premise that makes
containers functionally adequate to
their task.
Physical separation from reality is
required to create an obvious perfor-
mance or show area, to deny perme-
ability and transparency, and to
produce the maximum artificiality in
climate, organization, and control. The
space is always artificial, interiorized
even in the open air. Produced by
multiple, variable, ephemeral means, it
is always enclosed by the rigid wrapper
of the container. The architectural
problem posed by the demand that
containment include enclosure as well
as programmatic diversity and super-
imposition of formal ideas is at once
cultural and technical.
terrain vague
The last of the proposed platforms
refers to ambiguous places where the
experience of historical time in the city
can be felt and which enjoy a love/hate
relationship with contemporary art,
cinema and photography; these sites I
refer to by the French term terrain
vague. The term may be translated as
wasteland in English but it is impossi-
ble to capture in a single English word
or phrase the richness of the meanings
of the French terrain vague.
In French, the term terrain has a more
urban quality than in English where, if
I am not mistaken, the word terrain
has evolved towards uses in agriculture
Thresholds 14
o
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T3
24
has evolved towards uses in agriculture
and geology. Terrain in French refers
both to defined lots of land, ready for
building, as well as to larger areas of
territory in a potentially exploitable,
expectant state. The term vague has
two Latin roots, vacuus and vagus,
which come together in the French
usage. The first root vacuus gives us the
sense of vacant, which is to say empty,
unoccupied, and yet also free, avail-
able, not engaged. The second root
vagus gives us the sense of vague in
English, which means undetermined,
imprecise, uncertain.
The paradox that is produced in the
message we receive from these indefi-
nite and uncertain terrain vague spaces
is not necessarily a purely negative
one. The condition of these spaces is
internal to the city yet at the same time
external to its everyday use. In these
apparently forgotten places, the
memory of the past seems to dominate
the present. These are obsolete places
in which only a few residual values
seem to survive despite their total
disaffection from the activity of the
city. They are areas where it can be said
that the city is no longer. From the
viewpoint of the real estate market
they are marginal places, industrial
areas, ports, unsafe residential neigh-
borhoods, contaminated places. Our
cities abound with this type of terri-
tory, abandoned by industry, by the
railways, by the ports. These are areas
abandoned as a result of violence, of
the receding of residential or commer-
cial populations, the deterioration of
buildings. These areas are former
dumps, gravel pits and quarries. They
are under-utilized areas between two
motor ways, along the edge of self-
contained housing developments, and
of restricted access for theoretical
reasons of security and protection.
The conventional approach to the
architectural and urban design of these
places is to seek, by means of new
projects and investment, to reintegrate
these spaces or buildings into the
productive urban fabric of the synco-
pated, busy, efficient city. But such
operations of urban renewal draw
strong negative reactions fi^om sensitive
people. Artists, photographers, local
residents and others who appreciate the
role of the ambiguous terrain vague feel
profoundly put out by development
there. They are disenchanted with the
uptight, non-stop urge towards devel-
opment of the city. The terrain vague
spaces are in fact the ideal places mark-
ing and maintaining the city's identity,
the confluence of the past and the
present, and the last uncontrolled
spaces in which to freely act.
These five proposed cultural categories
through which to understand a new
relationships between architecture and
the massive metropolitan areas of the
present began with the notion of
mutation and ended with that of
terrain vague, which constitutes its
counterpoint, the reverse of the metro-
politan coin. This is not paradoxical.
Only equal attention to values of inno-
vation on the one hand and memory
and absence on the other will enliven
our confidence in a complex, plural
urban way of life. The role of art
(including architecture), Deleuze has
written, "is not that of producing self-
conscious objects for their own sake,
but rather of becoming the reveahng
force that will make manifest multi-
plicity and contingency."
Tloresholds 14
Nostalgia Versus Nihilism in the Post-
Industrial Suburban Context.
This thesis project advo-
cates, to the Cn]th degree,
both and yet neither of the
two positions. It is neither
nostalgically yearning for
an irretrievable past nor
reveling in apocalyptic lyri-
cism about the present. It
offers neither "correction"
nor "commentary." Rather it
attempts to approach the
suburban condition by
accepting its reality, inclu-
sive of all positive and
negative aspects, and
transgress that reality by
questioning the "rules"
which give rise to it.
The formal design proposal,
as is the case in any
design, may be debated.
And while it is thought to
raise a number of relevant
issues concerning
construction and articula-
tion in the context of the
suburban strip, its evalua-
tion and potential are more
appropriately understood at
the conceptual level. That is
to say, the project is about
more than the engagement
of two walls at the high-
way's edge, it is about the
implications of and sugges-
tions made by their mere
presence. Effectively, they
suggest that the rationale of
the suburban strip land-
scape can be both accepted
and challenged, that its
ideologies can be trans-
gressed, and that there is
potential for architecture in
"non-place."
Consolidated Periphery
Commercial and Highway Interchange
Master's thesis
Christine McGrath
Thresholds 14
3 consumption is innerently human, social
interaction is inherently human, consumption
is often a social engagement.
o
30
I i
development by 2006.
The site, as a highway inter-
change, does not exist. By 1998. it
will. By 2000. it will have trans-
formed itself from what it was in
1998. And by 2006. its present
1996 condition will no longer be
legible. To address the fact that
the site is still to some degree a
non-site, or hypothetical site, this
study projects a potential evolu-
tion for the proceeding decade.
Development, rather than emerg-
ing as independent privatized
dispersed capsules might be
amalgamated and compressed
into a singular entity, tied to, rather
than distanced from, the infra-
structural network of the highway.
This is noteworthy at four levels.
First, it addresses issues of
dispersion and land consumption
by grafting the suburban land-
scape and its constituent pieces
into a single amalgamation and
inserting them into the presumed
"leftover" space of highway infra-
structure. This obviates the
current lack of integration
between architectural and infra-
structural endeavors in the subur-
ban context. Second, its "insertion
point", that being entirely within
the proposed highway "right of
way", calls into question basic
understandings of ownership,
and more pointedly, issues of
privatization. As the land encom-
passed by the highway consti-
tutes publicly held land owned by
the state, the location of commer-
cial entities within this realm rele-
gates ideologies of private
enterprise to a unique platform.
Third, at a larger urban scale, and
at the scale of the highway, the
scheme implicates architecture as
a physical and psychological
interface between highway and
town, between line and place.
Other "polar relationships" thus
considered in the initial phases of
the design include: movement/
stasis, transience/ permanence,
public investment/capital gain,
vehicle/individual, day/night.
front/back, top/bottom, and
plan/section. I make the sugges-
tion that adjunct elements of
infrastructure might nave a more
supple relationship with architec-
ture, such that the two might
begin to mutually inform and limit
the other's growth. In this case, a
singular gesture made by two
wall elements is intended to
absorb most of the functions
necessitated by both the highway
and Its associated commercial
presence. The building can be
read as an earth berm. It is the
abatement wall. It is the strip
mall, the parking lot, the roadway,
and the billboard.
IR
The building was designed to be
roughly symmetrical about a diago-
nal axis In order that one would
read Its ends as Inverted opposltes
of one another. The strategic benefit
of doing this was that It allowed the
building to carry equal weight at
both the ground plane and at the
roof. Eliminating hierarchy, or verti-
cal stratification, was critical in
order to make multi-story building
an economically viable design solu-
tion. The access system allows one
to either enter at the roof and
traverse the building descending
toward the ground plane or to enter
at the ground plane and ascend
upward. A third access addresses
the highway traveller-the transient
being, wanting not to stay, but only
pause, momentarily Acting much as
a concourse In an airport, this sliver
of space, running from the north-
bound exit ramp, piercing through
the center of building, and re-
emerging at the corresponding
northbound entrance ramp, Is the
epitome of a fixated desire for effi-
ciency It is here, literally in this fast
lane, where one encounters those
spaces most rapidly consumed— the
gas station, the dry cleaner, the
automatic teller machine, the drive-
thru, the coffee joint.
program.
The distribution of program also
follows an Inversely reciprocal
conception, a field of interspersed
events activating the circulation
spine which conjoins them.
Roughly the programmatic
volumes are concentrated verti-
cally about the building's middle
and presumed most active level-
that of the concourse, and hori-
zontally about its center-most
likely the location of the so-called
anchor stores-compressing as
much program as possible within
this sector, in an effort to
increase the likelihood of pedes-
trian activity in these zones. The
spatial programming purposefully
avoided a deterministic attitude,
for capitalism will run its own
course. The building sections
demonstrate the purposeful impli-
cations of this fundamental
texturing of program. In spite of
any multitude of conditions that
may occur along the building's
length, these conditions are
always relative to the condition of
the wall. It is the common
denominator, the unifier, the
prevailing organizational element
for the entire building.
! TTi
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31
TIjirshollis 14
BfMY MARTrN
fvl
32
^\
bacardi, vw, and the gap.
Signage. In light of most common
applications, excluding more recent
projects by contemporary European
and Japanese architects, signage has
held the deplorable status in architec-
ture of "applique." While the Modernist
aesthetic has little room for non-
Corbusian extras and the postmodern
revels in symbols, it remams that a
project such as this must address the
issue of signs. The necessity of
signage in a retail/commercial build-
ing IS not only accepted, it is appropri-
ated, to the degree that is no longer
viewed as additive to the architecture,
but a part of it-neither duck nor
decorated shed.
Effectively two strategies deal with
signage-one operating at the level of
the highway and the other at the level
of the individual building components.
From the highway, the building is two
walls-program and the advertise-
ments for that program. On the media
wall, advertisements directed toward
the highway traveller move at his/her
speed. 28.8 seconds is both the length
of the building and the duration of a
typical commercial. Signage is used to
forge an indelible inextricable relation-
ship between two walls. One is. three-
dimensional space: one is the
compressed two dimensional repre-
sentation of that space. One is in
motion, the other is static.
EATRES
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£ » b\
7 the seemingly chaotic formlessness of
"exopohs" may not be chaotic or formless
at all — it may simply have an order, a
form, a potential we fail to see.
Tlircsholds 14
Entropy and Surfaceness
Master's thesis
James K. Casper
34
Introduction
The layer of the Earth's atmosphere which contains clouds and weather systems is a thin
thermoregulatory surface; it maintains an exact energy budget between the Earth and the
Sun. Recent work in theoretical physics is aimed at these types of dynamic systems. Key to
a system such as the atmosphere is the constant yet fluc-
tuating input of energy which forces the system into a
state distant from its thermodynamic equilibrium.
Certain physical systems, when past this point begin to
organize themselves into dynamic structures which work
to dissipate the incoming flux. As a result, they are
decreasing system entropy, a characteristic previously
only assigned to life or living matter. The line between
living and inert systems has expanded to a field wide
enough to work within.
Concurrently, developments in the engineering of so-
called intelligent materials seek to invest material or inert
matter with characteristics or behaviors of life. Scientists
intend the materials to sense, process and respond to
environmental forces in a dynamic bio-mimetic manner
through engineering at the molecular scale.
This thesis project uses intelligent materials in the
conte.xt of a built application. Customarily, physical or
inert systems (such as a building) do not carry the trait
assigned exclusively to life or the emergence of lite — the
reversal of entropy. This research investigates the possibil-
ity of employing such traits in building.
The proposed built system becomes a metallic alloy
atmosphere on the thin surface boundary of a building.
Working also to dissipate an influx of solar energy, the
building's surface will develop 'weather systems', dynamic
and cyclonic, moving across and around the metallic
skin. Perturbations from the imprints of the cloiids and shadows will seed the system,
throwing it into flux as it seeks to feather out the disturbances and settle back into puls-
ing rhythms and patterns. Space, scale, time, orientation, and a metaphorical 'emergence
of life' are re-introduced to building, a customarily inert or inanimate system.
"In the near future, border lines of mental cfianges in ways which environmental changes toward the
the software field and the material maximize their function Intelli- optimum conditions and manifest
region will overlap and finally gent materials may be defined as their functions according to the
merge together completely This
situation is found in vanous aspects
of life including human being
The conceptual background of
intelligent materials is a combina-
tion of advanced aspects of materi-
als science and computer
engineering which seeks to create
composite materials systems which
can sense and respond to environ-
the materials which respond to changes."
je
-TTakagi in his introduction to the
"Proceedings of the First International
Conference on Intelligent Materials"
It is only recently that science has begun to approach certain specific 'functions' of
the atmosphere. Studies directed at the consequences of ozone depletion have
begun to chronicle the role of weather formation in relation to the earth's so-called
'energy budget'.
The earth's atmosphere acts as a thermoregulatory 'surface' between incoming solar
radiation and the crust. A combination of thermal convection and rotation,
vyeather systems develop energy fluxing from the equator to the poles and back
into space. These rhythms leave unmistakable physical and psychological imprints
on the life contained within as useful registration marks on the earth for orienta-
tion, scale, space and time. All aspects of life are affected by, maintained by, and
generated in the process.
I^^^^l
Thresholds 14
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site.Utah.37 degrees latitude .109 degrees longitude,
blackmesa.fluid surface.energy.
A hard, ore-like crust, brittle, obdurate and subtly
shifting. Fastened between the atmosphere and the
mantle, Black Mesa is a literal material boundary
between fluid systems and their energy. Black Mesa is
a thin surface of shifting entropy; a phase interface; a
non-material singular surface bearing surface mass,
momentum, energy and entropy.
survey maps.scale.length.iteration.
In plan, the survey lines on the USGS maps of Black
Mesa betray formal circumstances of elevation and
space. The lines tend to reverberate around changing
landscape intensifying with greater quantity and
shorter length. This exercise reads those lines, then
reiterates them in multiple scaling processes.
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Nitinol, a shape memory alloy (SMA]
Within a system maintained far from equilibrium,
shape memory alloys, SMAs, as 'dissipative media,'
can be predictably 'activated' at any one of many
specified moments of change in the environment.
Nitinol is a material which can be precisely adjusted
to desired specifications or transition temperature of
force. Importantly, Nitinol has molecular dynamics
very simUar to that of water. Below its transition
temperature, it can be stretched or elongated. Above
the transition temperature, it undergoes a radical
change to a different molecular structure. The transi-
tion temperature can be adjusted to activate at any
specified change in the environmental temperature.
TInrsbollis 14
38
A building panel system could be open or closed
when coupled to an SMA actuator. When assembled
in an array, the entire system could begin to adjust its
'albedo forcing' by working as a system simulating
thermodynamic of fluid system almost exactiy the
way an actual atmospheric system would. The 'rule'
for the system could be adjusted to the particular site
climate. In the initial development, however, it may be
better to link the panels to a photovoltaic cell which
would then power the SMA. Nitinol has the power to
produce a great amount of force with a small charge.
An electrical connection between neighboring panels
allows each to read the energy level of their nearest
neighbors and adjust according to the rule.
Initially it might seem that there would be no reason
for the panels to begin to operate individually, that
they might each act in the same way, because it is the
same sun striking the surface of the system. However,
more local 'seeding' could occur with a passing cloud
or a shadow. This seeding effect would activate the
system into a complex behavior, growing and dissi-
pating the perturbation until the system again returns
to its operating parameter. The system should now
retain its operating parameter by being in constant
dynamic motion. It will have evolved into a 'sea' or
atmosphere, growing patterns and structures which
dynamically evolve, move, emerge and decay.
A daily cycle of reactions.
At night the array will go to sleep, and the system will
become transparent. In the morning it arises, identifying
the sun, its muscles cold and inflexible, but straining to
move. As the system warms, it loosens up, the sun moves
behind a tree and it yawns slowly into motion. The
shadow of the trees is feathered repeated into a field of
rippling grids. Slowly at first, then increasing in scale. As
the sun passes the corner, the south facade swings into
motion while the east surface relaxes back into a subtle
shimmering field. More motile now, the systems fever-
ishly work to dissipate the sun. Systems develop, spiral,
vortex, hurhng across the array's face and disappearing
into infinity or off the side of the face. Inside the light
constant, yet active. The sun moves to high noon and is
strong. The system shelters, slow again and almost
opaque and solid. All interior light is now reflected from
the north, east and west. The western sun is hot and the
west wall closes quickly to a steel wall, obdurate and
unyielding. The muscles are tight and hold fast against
the radiation. Finally, as the sun falls quickly processes
reverse and the sunset is within the atmosphere of the
systems. Color, light, heat, and steel fall back to sleep.
Tomorrow there might be a thunderstorm.
The building envelope is a microcosm of our atmos-
phere and building scale of its entailed dynamics. Fenes-
tration becomes temporal and omni-spatial.
Orientation is etched on the surface like sun on skin,
unconsciously knowable. Boundary and enclosure are
elusive, non-reducible, non-reproducible and never the
same twice. The metallic skin is a snowflake, a storm, an
ocean, an organism.
"Let us suppose, then, that all
organic instincts are conservative,
are acquired historically and tend
towards the restoration of an earlier
state of things. It follows that the
phenomena of organic develop-
ment must be attributed to external
disturbing and diverting influences.
The elementary living entity would
from its very beginning have had
no wish to change; if conditions
j.ie'Sr.'.' r... ! ;
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remained the same; it would do no
more than constantly repeat the
same course of life. In the last
resort, what has left its mark on the
development of organisms must be
the history of the earth we live in
and its relation to the sun. Every
modification which is thus imposed
upon the course of the organism's
life is accepted by the conservative
organic instincts and stored up for
further repetition Those instincts
are therefore bound to give a
deceptive appearance of being
forces tending towards change and
progress, whilst in fact they are
merely seeking to reach an ancient
by paths alike old and new."
-Sigmund Freud, Beyond the
Pleasure Principle
'.fir'' iiasiu.!
MiiififiMia «■■««
39
Thresholds 14
Learning Where Not to Build
a conversation with Kristina Hill
Kristina Hill is a Planning Professor at MIT. Through a
combination of written responses to questions and a face to
face discussion of the issues she addresses as an educator and
Landscape Architect, the Thresholds editors compiled the
following transcript, taking loosely the form of an interview.
Thresholds editors You have mentioned previously some of the
attitudes and skills you hope architects and planners can take away
from an education in Landscape and Ecology In the courses you
teach at MIT-Site & Urban Systems Planning and Landscape Ecol-
ogy & Urban Development-you have described the primary skills
students can learn as those related to identifying innovative spatial
strategies, which you see as the root of design. While teaching site
planning is important in schools of architecture, you see a more
crucial need to instruct "site reading?" What is "site reading?"
Kristina Hill I do think "site reading" is the place to begin,
not site planning. But if you don't take the time to learn a
language, you can't really comprehend texts — even if you
can read the words. Most of what can be taught in one or
two courses is just a beginning — a skeleton for really
"reading" sites. The act of interpreting what one "reads" is
fundamentally the act of designing — so I don't think "site
reading" can be taught effectively outside a studio context,
where students could apply their new ability to "read." I
think the critical things architects and planners need to
understand about sites are the things which can be
diagrammed spatially and temporally. Once the character-
istics of a site or landscape are diagrammed, this new
representation reflects a set of priorities. Without priori-
ties, the "text" presented by any site — however small — is
boundless; there's nowhere to start, nowhere to stop, and
no order in what can be interpreted. That's why I come
back again to this question of strategies and priorities.
Without them, we can't associate cultural meaning or rela-
tive value with the spatial structures we devise for the site.
A lot of students I talk to from architecture have
heard about systems ecology and they've seen diagrams
where systems cycle. They're familiar with a kind of left-
over from 1970s systems approach, a kind of ecology
described by these spaghetti diagrams of flows, and boxes,
and systems. But this has no spatial dimension to it. If on
the other hand, you look at landscape ecology, which is the
sub-discipline of ecology which looks at the interaction
between spatial pattern and natural process, then you can
begin to say sure, everything is connected in some way,
but, things are not all connected in the same way. In land-
scape ecology, one wetland is not the same as another; all
wetlands are not "equal"; there are different points in this
system that emerge as unique points — that can be
diagrammed — where things can be done. For example; to
restore an urban stream, all locations along that stream are
not "equally" suitable. Or, if we want to improve urban
water quality while we develop a higher density architec-
ture, we'll have to look strategically as to where are the
points we can build filtration devices into the higher
density urban system.
So there are those places in the landscape that are not
the same as other places, that have to be identified through
some sort of assimilation of all the detail out there. We can
identify the strategic information in all the detailed infor-
mation, that's site reading. The value of teaching how to
see and record the strategic information is in learning how
Thresholds 14
42
to graphically describe what's important in our "readings"
of sites and landscapes.
ed It is fairly common for architects to begin with the given site
and context in devising spatial layouts for their built forms. In fact,
there is often a deep reliance or even a dependence on this
context. How do you see that site reading and landscape strategies
could be different from this? To put the question in a negative
framework, how are the typical ways in which architects examine
context limited or misleading'
KH A lot of architects see the site they are presented with
as either a blank slate, the equivalent of a white sheet of
paper they can do anything with, or they see elements of a
romanticized natural virtue — maybe a stream, a grove of
old trees, or a visually striking rock outcrop. In the latter
case, the designer's impulse is often to put the building
next to this romanticized element of the site, as if to draw
some kind of power from it.
If you look at Peter Walker's work in corporate head-
quarters buildings you see this. He'll juxtapose a corporate
building with a meadow, using the icon of the prairie in
opposition to the corporate. But saying its a prairie only
three acres in size is like saying you've got a three acre
ocean. You can't have a three acre prairie. You can plant
prairie plants in three acres, but the concept of a prairie is
a much larger system; its regional.
Understanding the site as part of a larger dynamic
system is absolutely critical to seeing what kinds of innova-
tive spatial strategies might make sense. This incorporates
the reality of on-going processes which tie every site into a
larger pattern of water flows, wildlife movement, and
natural disturbances like fire or windstorms. And yet very
few architects or planners visualize these dynamics in ways
that let them realistically dimension their plans for the site.
They may hold onto the concept and terminology of
dynamic change, but very few learn to perceive and struc-
ture a specific, relevant material reality in response to it.
That essentially static understanding of the elements of a
site is without a doubt the most misleading approach any
designer can adopt.
Some of what Bernard Tschumi is doing in Pare de
LaVilette is critiqued by landscape architects this way.
Although he thought of the park as different systems — the
gardens, the paths, the follies — and overlaid them, the
juxtapositions themselves are supposed to be these
wonderful accidents. This is problematic on a number of
fronts. First, juxtaposition is not an accident in the real
world. The accidental juxtapositions in Tschumi's design
end up being banal to most people because they don't have
any meaning, any cultural leverage. Like English words
without any grammar, there's no art to it. Secondly, the
idea that the chaos and disorder of nature are juxtaposed
with the systemic sampling of the follies in fact isn't some-
thing that you experience. There's no sense of the surface
once Tschumi's "layers" are combined. Its fine if you enjoy
his drawings of it, but when you actually build those places
you e.xperience all those things at once. Its like the way that
the layers of Photoshop are, together, what makes the
image. All the layers in all those exploded plans are what
makes the image. But that's not what you're building or
what you see. You're not building the three dimensional
chess set axonometric. People somehow lose the sense of
that in the stress and glory of a design competition.
Thirdly, the naive conception of nature as the "disor-
ganized" is carried in those accidents. The accidents are
supposed to be the chaotic, and this is where nature
"occurs." Here the follies are a grid, like random samplings
in the way scientists sometimes sample the natural world,
and the natural is the "disorganized." On the intellectual
level the idea is that the accidents in our perception allow
us to see things that we otherwise would not see; the sort
of "chaos" of the natural world. That may work as an intel-
lectual idea but I don't think it makes sense. Nature is still
conceived of as the other, but nature is not the other.
Nature is us, our bodies, our creations.
Yet with this concept, it does seem like in our cities,
our population, we compensate for nature's perceived lack
in other ways. This is so strange, but there are people in
our urban areas that we think of now as wolves. There are
incidents of violence called wilding. Attacks of a "pack" of
evil young men made on women or other young men.
These actions are so aggressive and so violent and so
incomprehensible to us that we think of it as wild, as wild
behavior. If you think about cities as places with natural
environments that contain other species, here humans
have replaced other species in occupying all niches. Now
we tell stories about black people, about violent urban
places, and make movies about it. We represent to
ourselves, to other people, the whole range of species —
from wild terror to cultivated caring — that we once repre-
sented with stories about wolves.
ed How do you think this sort of approach and this sort of an
attitude towards nature might be overcome? In design studios
especially, do you see a model for Integrating the disciplines?
KH I think there is no substitute for the kind of energy
and passion multi-discipUnary studios that involve envi-
ronmental scientists as well as artists, engineers, and other
design professionals can pass on to students. But I also
think an "event-based curriculum" in which students have
shorter, more intense collaborations can create extremely
memorable experiences, and teach very important lessons
that stick in people's minds. I think a good education
should use both methods of exposing students to multi-
disciplinary work — sometimes in semester-long studios,
but at least once each term running intensified charrettes
that involve a field trip or some memorable physical expe-
rience as well as a design exercise.
What's missing from the education students get in
both departments of this school is an ability to compare
and prioritize urban design strategies, in a very basic sense.
and of course the larger body of knowledge of how natural
processes both affect and are affected by our spatial plan-
ning decisions. What's missing from my own courses is
probably an articulation of the connection between, on the
one hand, the functions embodied in the physical and
biological environment — and on the other, the world of
cultural myths and stories which allow us to interpret that
environment and choose how to act in it. 1 don't have the
time to cover all that ground in the seminar courses I'm
teaching now, and only hint at these connections (in a way
that I hope makes students curious about them!). For
example, both of my courses have become focused on
water as an element of urban design and spatial planning,
but use different emphases and project contexts to
communicate what it is that could be called "strategic"
about the role and meaning of water in urbanized areas.
Really, the most important piece of an urban design
education that 1 think is missing in our departments is the
critical ability to know when to STOP making more and
more extensive cities — and what to do as an alternative. It
planners and designers don't know when and where not to
build, the concept of sustainability won't be a meaningful
part of urban design.
ed Can you say something more on this ability to "know when to
stop" and the concept of sustainability?
KH 1 think that the future of this whole sustainability
question, the future of landscape and urban design, is not
going to be so much what we do around buildings in new
development areas, although that's always part of what we
do for quality of public spaces, but rather, a two-pronged
approach in the future, where on one had we're thinking
about making cities more dense and compact and that
really work (and in the U.S. that's no small task); and on
the other hand looking at what we're going to conserve.
My work right now ranges from asking what the water
quality impacts are of denser developments to National
Park areas, where we're really trying to preserve wilderness
as a concept. I work right now in Canada's Jasper National
Park, which is designated one of their wilderness parks.
43
Tlnrsholds 14
The problem is that development isn't just happening
in certain places; urbanization is happening everywhere.
there's a town of 5000 people in the middle of this wilder-
ness park, and development has been crushing the parks,
whether it's there, or whether its Yellowstone, or wherever.
Our urbanization and the internationalization of urban
financial capital is putting pressure to develop on all of
these areas. If we don't take a two-pronged approach in
knowing what not to build on, we're not going to have
anything else but cities 200 years from now.
ed This IS not unlike the ideas of the modernist environmental
planner Dioxides, mentioned in the work of Pani Pyla elsewhere in
this journal. Dioxides had something to say about zoning the world
in terms of development/non-development pnorities irregardless of
national, ethnic or regional boundanes in order to preference envi-
ronmental balance first-
KH If you want to have a spectrum from wilderness areas
(where we feel there is something larger that us), to dense
urban areas (where we enjoy our own social interaction
and feel part of our own society), we're going to have to do
this consciously, its not going to just happen. Development
pressure is just a continuous surface across the planet right
now. There's no place that's really not under development
pressure (except, ironically, some of our older cites.) And I
think that there's been a romanticization of what wilder-
ness is or what nature is in architecture which says: "I can
put a building or set of buildings next to something and
create a contrast using landscape" or says "landscape is the
Borg or the non-human, and the building is the human or
the cultural, and therefore the building puts the non-
human in context".
But in fact that's not true, because all of our land-
scapes are heavily reworked, manipulated, cultural arti-
facts. Even wilderness is something that's in debate as to
whether the possibility for wUderness exists at this point.
In the way that the atmosphere and historical activities of
many people have affected landscapes. Everything is a
cultural landscape. The idea of wilderness has to be rein-
vented and may even apply to cities as well as to almost
rural areas. There are parts of New York City that are
"wilder" than parts of Canada.
So I guess that's why I bring up the question of where
to stop developing. The New Urbanists have talked a lot
about compact development and benefits of urban sustain-
abUity, but most of their projects, almost all of their
projects are on greenfield sites — they're on new sites, and
that's not sustainable So how do we get that idea to apply
to cities and keep the alternative? Having an alternative is
important in understanding what the gradient is, from the
least developed to the most developed. It's simply not the
future trajectory that we should develop everything in
some way.
ed You seem to be suggesting that a better model for project
development would begin with site reading, site analysis, the inclu-
sion of landscape architects, and then lead into the architectural
proposition. Do you have other examples of practices or specific
projects that have benefited from such cross-disciplinary efforts?
KH I think there are endless examples of ways in which
strategies literally grounded in the site have resulted in
better designs overall. Two that come to mind right away
are the original campus plan for the University of Virginia
and the plan for the Salk Institute in California. Both of
these were sited with an eye for "the infinite" — they
opened out onto views of a distant horizon, in order to
connect the viewer with both her immediate surroundings
and, simultaneously, the larger world.
These designs are not just about the immediate
surroundings. There is a second and equally important
siting concept about making a conceptual connection with
the distant horizon, the greater whole. This is what's
revealed in Vincent Scully's analysis of the Greek theater.
The siting reveals a feature in the distant horizon, in this
case it is the cleft and the horn in the mountains. And
viewing those features was very important to their under-
i»!^A-"<;
standing. It's about everything in that cuhure, from sexual-
ity, to fertility to the culture of the gods. That was the
larger focus. In Jefferson's UVa campus, where the opening
is focused towards the larger mountains, it's: here's the
campus and there's the bigger world. A different context
grounds you. And it's done in Salk. A channel of water
points out to the ocean and the openness of that land-
scape. These examples embody this two-pronged approach
we have to take, I think, as a sensibility.
This strategy reminds us of the need to set our goals
and priorities in a very broad context, by opening our eyes
to (hterally) the "big picture" in a way that captures the
imagination. Olmsted's design of Boston's "Emerald Neck-
lace" of urban parks was based on an analysis of its urban
waterways — and helps Bostonians make sense of their
environment by letting them see how the Fens are
connected to the Charles River. This kind of intra-city
orientation using connected sites is critical to the legibility
of urban life — it made the simple idea of a linear park into
a broader conceptual model of a city with a water-borne
circulation system. Other examples include the Woodlands
new town near Houston, Texas, which used natural surface
drainage instead of storm sewers to control flooding —
while providing recreational corridors, wildlife habitat, a
highly-desirable residential aesthetic, and reducing infra-
structure costs; while a project which I worked on recently
in eastern Germany used linear parks as an infrastructure
for monitoring and remediating groundwater pollution
around a large city. All of these projects started with the
site, using priorities developed from a combination of
cultural myths and natural processes to interpret it and
evolve a dimensioned, structural approach to providing
architectural form.
I don't think these examples represent new forms. But
I do think they represent the use of existing forms in new
ways. That's a critical piece of what designers can do to
promote sustainability — using well-known forms in inno-
vative ways. It represents a kind of spatial strategic think-
ing that lets the designer draw on the history of how a
form has been used to come up with new functions, and
therefore generate more complex meanings for the form.
opposite Salk Institute sketch. Louis Kahn
top University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville,
Virginia 1819-26, engraving 1856
above The axis of the Acropolis with the Horns of Hymettos
[from Vincent Scully)
Thresholds 14
46
wintlmilUvretectK
power
surface
subsurface
which may shift the way people understand its functions
over time.
ed Now, in your Germany project you do this. Is this associated
to the two pronged approach?
KH In Germany I was trying to invent new functions in
and for common forms. And that is the two pronged asso-
ciation to this work. The linear park aspect is not a new
concept by any means, but the underground functional
aspect of it is different than the common. Given the two
schools of thought about meaning, Phenomenology vs.
collective storytelling, folklore, or collective meaning, I
think that collective storytelling is really the source of
meaning.
Meaning derives fi-om the stories people tell in
groups, as groups, not from a symbol, and some funda-
mental, phenomenological reaction a person has to a given
symbol, say a circle, fire or a square. Its about groups
telling stories. What happened at a certain place, the mean-
ing it has in their lives, what occurred at a certain time that
was really extraordinary to them. These stories, that's
where meaning comes from. I rely on the story telling for
interpretation. I think that the phenomenological
approach is interesting but a distraction. I rely on groups
gathering and interacting with things, not on an analysis
that the circle is the symbol of this, or fire of that. And
that's a big change fi^om the earth art of the 1970s, the
Spiral Jetty for example, that really relies on the phenome-
nological aspect of what they were doing. I want things
that mean something and do something. 1 want things that
work. I guess I'm very MIT in that way.
So in Germany a system of underground, hidden
dikes could prevent the existing ground water conditions
from ever contaminating the city supply. I proposed a
system of linear parks, as common forms, that act as dikes,
both literally and metaphorically, below. These hydraulic
walls created by pumping wells in underground canopies
prevent contamination. A wall of unseen wells in overlap-
ping, upside-down "umbrellas," prevents that contamina-
tion from overcoming the wall of the wells. The linear
parks above, then, look nothing like, but act metaphori-
cally as, a medieval wall spatial analogy. It is in this way
that I set goals and priorities in a very broad context, and
with common elements redefined, opened our eyes (liter-
ally), to the big picture of water quality in a way that
captures the imagination.
ed With your ideas on where meaning comes from, can you
suggest some terms stemming from landscape and ecology that
are missing from or are poorly defined in an architect or urban
planner's glossary of concepts?
KH Some of the most commonly misused terms are
"natural'' (often confused with a romantic ideal or
aesthetic), "ecological" (often confounded with "environ-
mentalism" and other political and social philosophies),
and also "sustainable," "healthy," and "habitat" are
frequently used in ways which confuse priorities, hopes,
and hypotheses.
ed Do you find that our ability to look at examples of "irresponsi-
ble development" perhaps sharpens our skills or provides a better
definition of the problems at stake?
I
KH I think you have to learn two processes. In the studio, I
want to teach how to go beyond conventional practice. But
you have to teach what is the conventional practice first. In
a way students don't know what that is yet. You have to get
to the point of simply comparing what are the conse-
quences of a conventional plan, and what are the conse-
quences of an innovative one in the real world. Take a plan
that tries to improve the ground water quality while devel-
oping. You have to ask: one might do well on a marketing
scale, while the other might do much better on environ-
mental benefits. So making sense of your own position on
what the future priorities might be is important.
I think just looking at the problems with the conven-
tional approach can give the student the sense that we can't
do it right. If you use successful programs to critique
unsuccessful programs then the student gets the sense that
everyone could be doing this right, if they learn what's
working. I'd look at what's working and see if they cover
all their bases, and ask where they could be extended,
made strategic as well as environmental.
ed You seem to frequently mention that strategy is very impor-
tant- Are architects and landscape architects renewing their own
strategies in response to territory shared with [or missing from] the
others?
KH In either discipline, landscape or architecture, the
talented ones, the ones who are really going to be effective,
see their practice more as strategic. I think that design
professionals who are going to succeed are doing this.
They see it less as wedding yourself to a discipline,
than as redefining what practice is going to be in general.
For example, we used to think when you go to a meeting
with the client, you would bring three versions of your
scheme. You'd say: "You know, we could do A...", and the
client's face would look not too pleased. So you'd take that
one away real quick and say; "Or! We can do B!" And the
client was still not happy . And so you'd show "C". And you
were hoping they liked that one, and you kind of saved the
best one for last anyway.
But I think now we go into a meeting knowing this is
really more of a probabilistic process. We might think, OK,
here are the anchor points that we're building a form with.
and then here's what we think might happen, or, might
happen, around it. And, importantly, here's how your
development will be adaptable to that fluctuating
economic impact — and when I say economy, I mean the
real economy, that which includes environmental costs.
So the target of architects and landscape architects is
really outside both fields. It's really a strategy of: "what will
make each project effective?" And this is economic. So it's
more of a triangle: landscape, architecture, the economy of
it. The two disciplines are really trying to position them-
selves appropriately in the triangle to be strategic.
Also I think there is a sharing here. Landscape archi-
tects have traditionally been very vulnerable in making any
intellectual statement of what they're doing. They're more
practice than theory oriented. Architecture people have
brought more intellectual spark.
Landscape architects have brought a whole sense of
process. They've said you're not designing a thing — you're
designing a thing in a changing context, itself part of the
process. You're designing a thing that is meant to survive a
fluctuating economy. Landscape architects know it has to
be more about change over time because their designs
always do change over time.
47
Thresl)oliis 14
Gray-areas in Green Politics:
Reflections on the Modern Environmental Movement
Panayiota Pyla
"The phrase 'only one earth' was born on the Apollo 8 mission circling
the moon..- The Image of the tiny earth with the moon In the fore-
ground, simultaneously shown on TV sets around the globe, changed
man's cosmic view of his home"'
The environmental consciousness that emerged in the
1960s as scientific research brought to the forefront the
reaUties of the earth's finite resources has in the past few
years come under scrutiny, while the ecological movements
of that time now seem unsophisticated in their enthusi-
asm, and ideologically suspect. Key contributions to earlier
ecological movements, such as Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring (1962), known as the "watershed of the modern
environmental movement" because it infiltrated public
sentiment by exposing the excesses of industrial agricul-
ture; Buckminster Fuller's Whole Earth Catalog which
emphasized the fear of ecological crisis; and Constantinos
Doxiades's Ekistics (1968) which aimed to define how built
settlements would be sensitive to the global ecosystem:
each of these positions assumed that the natural environ-
ment has a stable "ecological balance" which needs to be
preserved, and each sought to establish a "harmonious"
interdependence among humans and nature.
The assumptions behind modern environmental move-
ments, contemporary critics argue, obscure "the social
relations and priorities that go into environmental prac-
tices"^ and depoliticize environmental matters. The book
Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (edited by
William Cronon, 1995), which is a collection of essays by
leading environmentalists across disciplines, presents some
the most persuasive challenges against the modern envi-
ronmental movement of the 1960s. This book demon-
strates that far from being "universal," conceptions of
nature are tacitly associated with political structures of
cultural domination, racial biases, social beliefs, class divi-
sions or gender politics. Each of the book's articles reveals
the complex entanglement of the "natural" with the
"human" world and uncovers how the constructed dualism
between the two is not simply false but politically preju-
diced. William Cronon's article, for example, demonstrates
that wealthy suburbanites who protest the farmers who
"exploit nature," do not represent an untainted concern for
the destruction of nature's "balance." Rather, their "envi-
ronmental" arguments are predicated on class biases, and
in their in their righteous protectionism threaten to
deprive the farmer of his/her living.' Similarly, Candace
Slater's article "Amazonia as Edenic Narrative" uncovers
how popular notions which pigeonhole the Yanomani
Indians as ah intrinsic part of their "natural" environment
fail to recognize the needs of this tribe as a human culture.
Dominant tendencies to exoticize this tribe of Amazonia as
"natural," Slater argues, are predicated on romantic
paradisal and Edenic images, and dehumanize a place with
thousands of inhabitants, (fig. 1)
Expositions of tacit political and power dynamics, such as
those of Uncommon Ground, promise to empower those
who have been suppressed by essentializing concepts of
nature. Yet these insights are at once enHghtening and
hindering for the purposes of environmentalism.' In
uncovering the political partialities of earlier environ-
mental movements and in uprooting any transcultural
understanding of nature, current analyzes do not only rela-
tivize nature, but also relativize the concerns about the
environment, and may end up turning them into political
issues alone.
The predicament behind the politics of environmentalism
was most striking in a recent BBC-World Service Report
about an international summit on nuclear proliferation.
The radio correspondent meticulously accounted for all
the positions voiced by the parties at the summit: The
Russian representative asserted that nuclear reactors in
Russia vifere operating within "established safety specifica-
tions"; the British prime minister, in turn, doubted this
assertion; the French envoy confined himself to impossibly
ambiguous remarks; and "the Environmentalists," the BBC
correspondent continued, categorically demanded that
most of the nuclear reactors scattered around the former
USSR countries be closed immediately because they are
older and in worse condition than Chernobyl.
It may be a substantial success for those "environmental-
ists" represented in the summit to have their voice heard
along with the opinions of top Government officials from
many countries. However, by inserting themselves within
the international political spectrum, these environmental-
ists were constituted as a political entity, and their position
was represented in the media as one of the many political
voices. In the process, environmental concerns become a
political posture, which obscures the fact that if another
"Chernobyl-type" disaster happens, everybody (whatever
their politics) will be affected.
This predicament is acknowledged by the authors of
Uncommon Ground. Despite their systematic expositions of
"the multiple natures of that thing we are quick to call
By JAMES ■ROOXE
Pfwidnil FrrTundo CoHof Jr Mello
(ui mov«4 10 ,c,ci,<T ■ KmchoT Am*
ton rajn lornl «, a ti«n,planil lor Ihr
Yanomafni Iniitns a iniM vinually
unUtichRj bv RKidam tlvilnairan
wlnw wayi 4«ic (rom ihe Sl<mr Aftc
nr t«w reserve, cnupkd wilh a
aJtBhiJv arnalkr parti acro&, Itw Inr
dcr. HI Vannuela. <aUI allow thr Yani>
II, SouU, Aman<a
6aj]l vjuar
Brazil Creates Reserve for Imperiled Amazon Tribe
wililrr
Vr angg\ra lot St yvan lor wtui
h» ]uii happmrd,*' uid Claudia Ando'
|ar coordinaior of ihr CornmivUun for
ih* Creiiion of a Yanomami Part, 4
private gtrojp bawd hrrr -
WHh the lair ol South Ameneai
,000 YanDinami an mlcmaliocul
luic. Napolwn A >7hignon, an Anwn-
carianthrDpoloBiti.K-tion] wK]<'^p^ralJ
Amrrltan and European mphona
*hen h« uid today me iFkepfionc inlc-
vtrv TNit will go • long icay to mali-
init culiur.1l lurvivil ol ihe Yarramami
a rrai (KHSibllily "
MIKtaiy RolM* M«vr
But noi rveryone wii clapping in
Sratilia un Friday when Mr Colbi
siped a d«rr(« mcrving I prrctnl of
Bmil'i land mau lor ihraancm'snii
■natrd 9,IIM Yanomami Ai thr ligning
ceremony. <ien Clarloi TinoMi. the
Armv MmUler. (loinlaily abiuowd
from louiint iht- appli
e and puniy of cam*
ritmliuj> It nplOKed in order to kpep
dormani the {niefillal of tV SratUtan
Amaion, warned a reiml study by
Ihe Superior War Colkrte. Braillielile
Dewrnblng Indian and other re-
serves aj ittieraled Bonei ' under irt-
■rmalional roAlroJ. Ihe miliiary docu-
meni pmlKtrd, 11 would like a great
Brazilian eflon lor iheir ellminaiHai,
probably resoniog to >a( '
Bui Ihe army't pollliul tiandlnglwt
tjeeti weakened in r«c«ni dav» by news-
paper reporu ol fixed bKldlng prac-
tices lor equipnicnl praairemenl:>
RetMifftng the irmy*i oaiMvia] jrcu
riiy arRutnemi. Mr CoUor s anrmunce-
meni came en the natknal holiday
marking the mililary'i afaolilKn ol
Brazli'i mourchy m 1184
Braillian "sovereignty roniinuei in-
lacti and even reiriforoed." Mr Collor
uid of the park Two weeks agOi
approved 71 othei Indian reiervei.i
enng 41,471 M)uare mllev
Yanomaffii naiton. mnuemialelnnenu
of Braiil's military htve argued thai
Braul ihould clear a I Imilr-'Wide bor
ifcr nlrip to leparale Braill's Yano-
moini fnrfn Veneniela > YBnomamt
Sesrchitig lor a mtaioa aflef (he
collapse ol ml emai tonal CJHnmunlsm.
Braul't ronlerVdUvi' grtterali are in
ciraungly laking naiwnalisi siands on
Collor igjKirvd ecoDomK oblK
raised by governor* ol two iiaie*
where the park will be locatnj. Amaio-
and Roralma
:icti in gold, (m. diamoTHlt and rinc.
park area u virtually papered with
!• hy mining com|Mnte . for
10 spproval by Indi-
Id medial wn by Bra
imn iitency, Funai
Single'HUndedlv
Invented by Bieguct, the ']urn> Hour" automatic waich
with houf duf^ay aitd minute KanJ Crafted in plaimurn with
a porcebin dial, fmm a limited lenei numbeie>) Ky the
m3ta.M«.000 EnUiged in t)uw detail
TiFFANY&CO.
■ai»W*«- •*.■■• ;- «a-^<i
'»oK3Bni3ft~[a5Eai
fig 1 /^ New York Times article that
promotes the common preconcep-
tion that the Yanomani Indians are
"natural" parts of the land Slater
refers to it and also points to the
irony that this article is accompanied
by a Tiffany S Co advertisement,
which underlines the rigid juxtaposi-
tion between the Yanomani as part
of nature, and the "modern civiliza-
tion " as part of "culture."
nature," many of the authors in
Uncommon Ground, point out that
"nature" as the non-human world
does, after all, exist. Along with her
expositions of the gender biases
behind modern meta-narratives
about nature, Carolyn Merchant,
for instance, also declares that "the
environmental crisis is real" and
that "the vanishing frogs, fish, songbirds are telling us the
truth."' This warning exemplifies the ambivalence of the
author who recognizes that once nature is presented as an
ideologically determined concept, and the protection of
the environment is perceived as a political tactic, then
there is a danger that we lose sight of threats that are
caused by the destruction of the environment, threats that
exist beyond the realm of relativity and the politics of
knowledge.
To tackle this predicament, I propose to reconsider the
premises of the modern environmental movement and to
explore how its insights could help rethink environmental-
ism as a critical attitude for the present. Using "Ekistics" as
a representative case for the environmental consciousness
that emerged in the sixties, I reflect both on the inadequa-
49
Thresholds 14
50
fig 2 The larger vision of
Ekistics was to combine all
disciplines to outline a
comprehensive plan for global
development
cies of modern environmental thought and on its contri-
butions. While rejecting universalistic and essentializing
conceptions of nature, I try to negotiate between the aspi-
rations of earlier environmental thought and later critiques
of it. My goal is not to reinstate an anachronistic ecological
approach, but to circumscribe current positions on envi-
ronmentalism in such a way that their liberating force can
extend to the realm of pra.xis.
"Ekistics," was one of the first theories that introduced
environmental concerns into the realm of architecture and
planning. Developed by the Greek urban planner Constan-
tinos Doxiades (1913-1975) in the late fifties, Ekistics — the
"Science of Human Settlements" — vv^as an interdisciplinary
theory aimed at outlining methods for structuring an
economically and ecologically viable urbanized world for
the future. (The term "Ekistics," coined by Doxiades
himself, is derived form the Greek word oikos, meaning
home, and has the same roots as the word "Ecology.")
Doxiades's theory of Ekistics had a tremendous impact
around the world: By the mid-sixties, it was taught in
universities; it formed the basis for government programs
on urban development in the US, Italy, Greece, Brazil,
Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, and other countries; and it was
incorporated in the agenda of the Habitat, the United
Nations conference on Human settlements.
Doxiades's Ekistics represents the ideas of architectural
modernism in its more critical stage, when it began to
temper the optimism for technological progress with envi-
ronmental awareness and anxiety about the earth's over-
population and finite resources." In his books and in the
Journal Ekistics,' Doxiades gave a terrifying portrait of the
environmental "catastrophe" that awaits if no systematic
"plan of action" is taken for a more "sensible" utilization of
earth's resources. He passionately emphasized the need to
sustain "the ecological balance." The goal of Ekistics was to
outline a global system of development that would make a
wise use of the environment, by reconciling, Do.xiades
argued, "the human efforts for growth and development"
with the limitations of a "finite world." Ekistics intended to
respond to massive construction demands around the
world promoting, as Doxiades argued, "social and
economic development" (e.g., post-war reconstruction for
Europe, housing for South America, urban institutions for
the emerging states in the Middle East); at the same time,
Ekistics would outline how built environments could
remain sensitive to the vulnerability of nature.' (fig. 2)
Similar to Rachel Carson's method of analyzing the rela-
tionships between living organisms and their surround-
ings, Ekistics studied the relationship between built
settlements and the natural setting and attempted outline a
problem-solving process for global planning that defined
how settlements should be planned in balance with nature.
"Human settlements" (notice, the universalistic connota-
tions of the very term) were treated as organisms having a
reciprocal relationship with their larger environment.
Resource and environmental management became central
to the Ekistic method of planning in order to defend the
natural and built environment. Doxiades created meticu-
lous scientific charts that calculated the resources in a place
and specified material-types to be used in different areas,
methods for underground water distribution, rules tor
land distribution for different regions, etc. Ekistics then
inserted these specifications into calculations about the
ecological balance of a specific place and the globe at
large.' (fig. 3)
The widespread acceptance of the Ekistic theory and its
worldwide implementation as an environmentally sensitive
planning method depended very much on the presentation
of Doxiades's technical and managerial consulting as a
rational, disinterested analysis, detached from the specific
locale it studied. This "detachment" concealed political
questions of power and inequality into technical issues of
natural resources and their management. With rhetoric
such as "action needs to be taken" Doxiades systematically
concealed by whom the required action would be taken. In
most cases, Doxiades's decisions were confined within
established governmental agendas, which were, in turn,
often funded by private US agencies operating around the
world. Far from being democratically determined, Doxi-
ades's decisions on where housing should be built, or how
dense it should be, failed to address the needs of the less
privileged in a society.'" Imposing strict zoning separations
in the name of environmental efficiency, Doxiades
remained oblivious to the social inequalities inherent in
these territorial divisions, and even exacerbated them."
This is the irony of the purported neutrality of such
"ecologically conscious" urban ordering: the proclaimed
aim to protect of natural assets, trees and scenery and to
improve local climate, camouflaged the reality of segrega-
tion of the poor from the upper classes.'-
As we come to see the specifics of the Ekistic theory, we
can recognize in it elements emblematic of both the
strengths and weaknesses of the modern environmental
sensibility. The modern environmentalists' attempts to
systematically capture, order and objectify ecological
processes often overlooked dominant power structures,
and exacerbated social and cultural inequalities. Yet their
pioneering institution of ecological sensitivity, their call for
prudent utilization of local resources, and their regard to
global needs for housing and infrastructure could continue
to bring to focus the crucial issues that affect many parts of
the world today, (fig. 4) While their all-encompassing, clas-
sificatory charts must be criticized for constructing regions
as bounded, determinate and controllable objects of study,
they actively propelled a systematic investigation of the
limitations of the earth's resources.
Indeed, despite the pitfalls of modern environmental
approaches, their larger aspirations can exercise a refresh-
ing critique against overzealous relativizations of environ-
mental problems. Whether earlier efforts such as Doxiades',
fig 3 Ecumenokepos or, Global
Garden. Doxiades's visior) of the
world in the future- According to
Doxiades's calculations, most of the
land on earth could be available for
cultivation or could be left
undisturbed for "wildlife".
51
Ecumenokepos
Thresholds 14
Fuller's or Carson's succeeded or failed is less important
now than the fact that, like the environment itself, their
premises reach beyond the realm of relativity into supra-
political concerns. It is in this spirit that modern environ-
mental thought can offer critical orientations to current
environmental predicaments. I would argue for a radical
re-evaluation that would negotiate the overlaps between
the modern consciousness and current critical thought,
not so much to regain the conviction of earlier move-
ments, but to redirect the admirable energy and sophistica-
tion of current critiques towards more effective directions.
Current critical thought could disentangle environmental
approaches fi-om an all-encompassing, universalistic and
rationalist framework of thought, while the aspirations of
ecological sensitivity would not be consumed by total rela-
tivism.
To illustrate how the negotiation between current critiques
and earlier ecological premises could be constructive,
consider once again. Slater's deconstruction of "Edenic
Narratives" in Uncommon Ground which has been quite
convincing is showing that:
"It is well worth asking not just how we can save the rain forest but why
we want to do so. Whom do we wish to benefit? And why focus our
efforts on Amazonia instead of Africa. Antarctica, or Northern Califor-
nia? Before we try to answer these essential questions, however, we
fig 4 One of the projects of
Doxiades Associates tf)at utilized
local resources in an effort to
improve Sudan's infrastructure.
must ask what we mean by 'the rain forest'. What exactly do we think
we want to safeguard?"
Consider, also, the leap from these insightful remarks to
the conclusion that immediately follows them, a leap
which threatens to nullify efforts for environmental
protection:
"It will be hard enough to reverse the acrid course of recent history in
Amazonia, But it is impossible to rescue something that does not exist"''
Indeed, to use Slater's own terms, we should not be "quick"
to call something "nature"; but, neither should we be so
quick in dismissing "nature" as something that does not
e.xist. If critiques such as Slater's aim to argue that environ-
mental approaches "impinge... not just on trees and
animals but on countless human lives" they should do this
without paralyzing efforts to prevent environmental
destruction, because such destruction would also impinge
on "human lives." In the case of Slater's argument, the
destruction of the Amazon region would affect, among
others, the Yanomani Indians themselves.
While any efforts to protect the Amazon region should
guard against tendencies to essentialize the traditional
lifestyle of the Yanomani Indians as an intrinsic part of
"nature," the ecological problems around the Amazon
should not themselves be entirelv relativized. The need to
respond to environmental destruction should remain in
focus, even though we should guard against any attempt to
collapse "protective measures" onto nostalgic preconcep-
tions of a romantic "nature" that would treat local cultures
as voiceless observers of external environmental measures
imposed on them. Environmental responses would need to
be actively negotiated with the complexities and demands
of the local culture, engaging with the politics of difference
and the fluid realities of "nature" and "culture." The
complex actualities of difference would reinforce, rather
than replace, ecological sensitivity.
What I am arguing then is that critiques of the modern
environmental movement come not as dismissals but as
extensions of it. In this way environmentalism could tran-
scend relativism, while highlighting the dangers of essen-
tialism and universalism. Perhaps the most radical
responses to environmental questions cannot emanate
from overzealous rejections of an earlier environmental
consciousness, but from a negotiated position; one which
operates "in-between," aiming to remain vigilantly critical
without losing the capacity to act.
IFrom the Journal Ekistks 208, March 1973, p. 114.
2 Yaakov Garb. "Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" in Dissent, Fall
1995.p.541.
3 See William Cronon, "Introduction: In Search of Nature" and
"The Trouble with Wilderness" in W. Cronon ed. Uncommon
Ground. WW. Norton & Company: New York and London,
1995.
4 "Environmentalism" encompasses diverse positions which can
be intensely antagonistic to one another. For the purposes of this
essay, however, 1 use the terms "environmentalism" and "envi-
ronmentalists" in the broadest possible sense, to refer to any
movements, organized groups or even individuals who are
actively concerned with environmental protection.
5 Carolyn Merchant, "Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as a
Recovery Narrative" in Uncommon Ground, p. 157.
6 Ivan Pedro de Martins captures very well the context in which
Doxiades operated: "...two aspects of knowledge coincided in
the circles of science and later of policy-making: the knowl-
edge of the planet as a container for mankind and for the
resources that allow human hfe, and the exhaustion of certain
fundamental products in the foreseeable future, a generation
hence, such as oil; a crisis that is bringing home to millions a
sense of danger and the eagerness to challenge it through a
rational approach to the ecological problem." (Ivan Pedro de
Martins. "Random Factors: Ekistics, Ecology and a Think
Tank: An approach to Settlement Planning from Doxiades
Onwards", in Third World Planning Review, Vol.2, No. 2,
Autumn 1980. p.I39)
7 The journal £fc(sfiV5( founded in 1955 and still in circulation)
was, during the sixties, edited in Cambridge, MA and circu-
lated in 94 countries.
8 Ekistics attempted to combine numerous disciplines in the
design of human settlements; in addition to ecology, it took
into account economic, psychological and sociological factors.
For the purposes of this essay, however, I will focus on those
aspects of the Ekistic theory that attempted to connect urban
design to ecological concerns.
9 Many of Doxiades's ideas on this subject were compiled in
his later book Ecology and Ekistics ( 1977)
10 His plan of Islamabad, for example — a plan which inserted
the Capital of Pakistan into an ecologically conscious global
schema — overlooked the questions of power and inequality
between the local regime and the various classes of the popu-
lation. See Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power and National
Identity.
1 1 In his restructuring of Athens, for example, Doxiades
claimed that his plan would make the city more efficient in
order to minimize the destruction of the environment
surrounding the city. People, he argued, should be housed
close to their work-place in order to minimize pollution from
transportation. (See Doxiades, Our Capital and Its Future.
1960) Yet, how was this "environmental concern" connected to
his decision to relocate lower-class workers at the industrial
area of Eleusina and to leave the privileged fringes of the
Penteli mountain to the high government officials?
12 Doxiades's proposals also concealed larger cultural dynam-
ics: The insertion of the new towns in Iraq or Islamabad into
the megastructure of a global interconnected ecosystem
assumed a transcultural uniformity in the model of urbaniza-
tion, and did not consider the questions of inequality and
cultural imperialism in global relationships. Similarly, Doxi-
ades never acknowledged the influence of western handing
institutions on his decisions to promote certain agricultural
developments and to abandon others. The universal claims
that Doxiades's "scientific" and "ecological" approach made,
depoliticized his interventions which were nevertheless
inevitably tied to such issues as land distribution, allocation of
resources, class divisions, and transcultural power dynamics.
13 Slater, in Uncommon Ground, p. 1 30.
NOMMMCMOKM.
lifo^cda^ ^tttti^^
Conservation campaigns have
long relied on photogenic
animals or scenic beauty to
raise funds, as with these
Canadian Wildlife Federation
holiday stamps.
53
Thresholds 14
msi;
'♦. *
*i^
ii ■■','• V .
x:?
^
^m'''*»i
tM*
Wolf Lake Landscape
Wolf Lake, Indiana
55
TInrsholdi 14
56
I
Lt. Petrosino Park
Azin Valy & Siizan Wines
Our approach to the design of residual spaces
in New Yorl< City celebrates the fortuitous inter-
actions possible between the city's diverse
cultural climate, the spatial dynamics of left
over open space, and nature. Applying the flexi-
bility of natural structures and systems to the
building of public space in the city, we arrive at
a design which cultivates discovery through its
ability to adapt to seasonal changes and new
input from the surrounding community. The
park structure should function like an armature
for the expression of different cultural identities
and the random flourishing of plant life. This
potential for transformation and evolution
fosters a more dynamic and empowering rela-
tionship between the inhabitants, their urban
environment, and nature.
These pnncipals were first developed in our LI
Petrosino park competition entry which was one
of three winning proposals. Final decision on that
park is still pending New York City Parks Depart-
ment approval. However, the basic concept could
be adapted to any number of pocket sites in New
York or other cities with similar spatial and social
dynamics. For us the solution to improving these
kinds of spaces is as much about bringing the
park directly to the community as bringing the
community to the park.
The proposed design creates a programmatic,
cultural and spatial connection between U.
Petrosino park and its surroundings. A hanging
garden extends from the facades of the
surrounding buildings to a series of columns
within the park. Neighboring residents are
invited to participate directly from their
windows in selecting, growing and planting the
flowenng vines and ivy which constitute the
garden. This simple gesture provides animated
patterns of light and shade at street level, and a
view of the entire street through a levitating
tapestry of rich greenery and brightly colored
flowers from the windows above.
The existing 3500 square foot park is located at
the intersection of Lafayette and Kenmare
streets at the threshold between Chinatown,
Little Italy and Soho. The simple framework of
cables and columns also provides an ideal
structure for a variety of community interven-
tions. The Italian community may decorate the
columns and cables with shimmering lights
57
Thresholds 14
during the San Gennaro Festival or Christmas,
while the Chinese could use the park for hang-
ing elaborately colored lanterns or dragons
during the Chinese New Year festivities. Dunng
the summer local artists may hang projection
screens for film and video festivals or create
sculptural works that use the columns as a
structural base. Participation may be as passive
as simply smelling the flowers at the window or
as active as designing special features for park
events and the customization of one's own
window box. The design of the structure and
landscape allows the park to function like a
flexible extension of New York City's urban
fabric, incorporating a variety of diverse contri-
butions into an ever-changing collage of city
culture and vegetation.
By using the sky plane as a garden, the design
reduces noise and air pollution to the
surrounding residences and puts planting out
of the reach of vandals, allowing for an open
rather than a gated and locked communal
garden as Is typical of New York City. Spatially
the pergola serves to Integrate the streets, side-
walks and building facades into the park, creat-
ing a kind of giant exterior room whose walls,
floor, and celling are alive with the energy of
the community. Within the park, areas for seat-
ing, playing and entertainment are integrated
Into a playful unfolding landscape of paving,
planting and water that inspires joy and inter-
action between people and the parkscape itself.
This is a living park, transformed each season
by the Imagination of its users.
59
Thresholds 14
Passages Some Notes on the Fusion of
Buildings and Landscape
James Wines
From an ecological perspective, mainstream architecture and
landscape architecture for the past two decades have sent out
mostly confusing messages. The values communicated to urban
du-eUers seem to endorse a discard attitude toward nature and a
view that "the earth" is a place where one drives to on the week-
end; but, upon return to the city, never associates with the design
of buUdings and spaces, or the serious enterprises of daily life.
As a result of designers' obsessive commitment to this century's
earlier industrial/technological dream, the relationship between
buildings and landscape is still dominated by the formalist tradi-
tions of early Modernist design — meaning that the edifice is seen
as the star and vegetation is treated as peripheral decor. There
seems to be a paranoid fear among architects that foliage might
upstage the buUding. In visual terms, this phobia usually results in
a rigid and separatist compositional hierarchy; where architecture
is regarded as a kind of centerpiece sculpture and landscaping is
reduced to a girdle of lolly'pop trees. This attitude has taken a
negative toll on urban aesthetic; but, more irrationally, it has been
bad for business and even worse for community well-being. The
bottom line is simply that abundant garden spaces attract people
to linger in city centers, thus improving commerce. From a health
standpoint, one tree absorbs 26 pounds of carbon dioxide and this
means four people can breathe. In large part, a city's fundamental
quality of life can be determined by an equation between the
number of people and a proportional quantity of trees.
During the past few years, it has become increasingly
apparent that architecture is desperately in need of a
reunion with the natural environment and a total re-
evaluation of its conceptual, philosophical, and
aesthetic priorities over the next decade. This does
not simply mean more urban greening and conserva-
tion efforts — although these are obviously urgent
issues — but, more importantly, it indicates the neces-
sity for a radically increased awareness of the "inte-
grated systems" found in nature and the capacity to
interpret them from a contextual and artistic perspec-
tive. All of the building arts today should connect in
some physical and iconographic way to a new green
sensibility. This suggests a response to social, psycho-
logical, cultural, topographical, as well as botanical,
influences. It also proposes the development of an
expanded definition of "environmental thinking" over
the next decade.
It seems inevitable that architecture must exchange its
roots in Modernist and Constructivist design, abstract
art, and Industrial Age imagery for a more open
ended visual language, consistent with the emerging
Age of Information and Ecology. For example,
people's reflex reactions to contemporary life have
been shaped by a pervasive "ambient sensibility,"
created by television, cinema, computer science, and
an awareness of the consequences of environmental
destruction. This consensus is a natural generator of
subHminal references that have little in common with
the industrial and technological sources that shaped
early Modern Design. As a result, it appears logical
that buildings and their adjoining spaces should no
longer be conceived strictly from the standpoint of
form, space, and structure; but, instead, change the
emphasis to narrative and environmental associations.
In this way, architecture can deal more directly with
new sources of content, a higher level of eco-
consciousness, and a greater responsibility to earth-
related issues. This shift of focus from physical/
hermetic to mental/environmental seems consistent
with both the informational and ecological revolu-
tions. It also opens up the building arts and landscape
design to a range of options that have been closed off
for most of this century.
Thresholds 14
ID
E
62
Max Reinhardt Haus,
Eisenman Architects
Currently, a great deal of post-Structuralist philoso-
phy in architecture is turning away from references to
deconstruction and chaos theory, in favor of "inte-
grated systems" that could be considered more in
concert with the so-called information highway and
ecology movement. One recent direction, referred to
as "folding," is being described with such terms as
"pliancy, continuous and heterogeneous systems, fluid
transformations, and smooth mixtures of disparate
elements." While some of this dialogue seems to
suggest a renewed sympathy for the organic architec-
ture of Frank Lloyd Wright, the actual manifestations
in built and model form (unlike Wright) tend to treat
the surrounding environment as an alien territory,
generally populated by a grid of trees that bear little
or no reference to the centerpiece building. Folding in
architecture is typically characterized by formal exer-
cises in the use of warped planar surfaces to alter
conventional relationships between exterior and inte-
rior. Whatever its claims for "pliancy and fluidity" —
the folded buUding still remains a familiar isolated
object that can be readily photographed apart from its
context, without a loss of meaning.
While some of the propositions of folding in architec-
ture appear to be in accord with the new eco-sensibil-
ity, there is no real "earth awareness" or intent to fuse
structure with context implied in its objectives. In
fact, there are no references to even the most elemen-
tary responsibilities of conservation technology and
sustainable design. Instead, like the appropriation of
deconstruction as an apology for neo-constructivist
stylistic tendencies, folding seems to be one more
e.xtension of twentieth century orthodox formalism;
its representative examples are very much a part of
the tradition of early Constructivism and the notion
that a building must always be some form of abstract
sculpture — in this case, comparable to a kind of
architectural origami.
One interesting linguistic contribution of folding in
architecture is an expansion of the meaning of "infor-
mation" to "in-Formation," which implies a fusion of
both the transmission of data and the developmental
process of shaping ideas. This thought leads direcdy
to the main focus here, the interpretation of architec-
ture as a system of "passages." It is a concept that links
buildings, landscape, and elements of social/contex-
tual/environmental communication. Edifices designed
on strictly formal terms and then plunked down to
await a bracelet of peripheral vegetation tend to
remain static and insular. Buildings conceived as inte-
grations of structure and landscape are mutable,
metamorphic, and evolutionary, constantly conveying
new levels of information.
One way of looking at the integration of architecture
and landscape architecture might be based, in part, on
an observation about television. The TV set in one's
living room is seldom regarded as anything more than
a generic artifact for receiving and disseminating elec-
tronically generated images. Usually a viewer does not
even notice the physical receptacle as an example of
good or bad design, nor as an important object of
furniture (although it can obviously be both). Instead,
the importance of the ubiquitous box is its capacity to
process information. Applying the same principles to
a building in relation to its context — and offering a
way of breaking free from the strictly formalist inter-
pretation of architecture — it is more productive to
shift the aesthetic focus of a building to its capacity to
absorb and transmit messages. This suggests that
walls, instead of being seen mainly as barriers of
enclosure or compositional elements, can serve as
information-filtering partitions (or points of passage)
that fuse and dissolve traditional inside/outside rela-
tionships and incorporate narrative commentary.
There is nothing new about the idea of walls deliver-
ing messages — all of the Medieval and Renaissance
churches and civic buildings of Europe were based on
walls for Saudi Arabian National
Museum project
[top) tile and ceramic walls
[middle] perforated metal
exhibition wall
(bottom} banded walls with
various materials
63
Thresholds 14
this objective — but, its radical appeal today derives
from an opposition to conventional architectural
geometry and the rich potential to establish landscape
and environmental awareness as leading forces of
change in response to the new Age of Ecology.
The interpretation of passages is infinitely variable
and should not be considered as any kind of design
formula. Basically, the concept proposes that walls and
floor planes in a building should be seen as fluid,
contextually responsive membranes, converting the
measure of aesthetic quality in architecture from eval-
uations of formal design to how well a structure
reflects and engages various aspects of landscape,
regional identity, topography, and cultural references.
In orthodox Modernist/Constructivist architecture,
walls are usually treated as functional/sculptural
elements that have an aesthetic significance derived
from abstract art and are contained by the clearly
defined perimeters of a floor plan. Walls as passages
can appear to defy the plan and range in physicality
and purpose from indeterminate ribbons of transition
in space to monitors of social/environmental change.
In terms of architectural construction, the concept of
passages proposes that plant life and earth elements
should be as much a part of the physical substance of
shelter as conventional building materials. From an
aesthetic standpoint, the objective is to look at the
fusion of structure and landscape as a kind of interac-
tive, biographical dialogue. When translated into a
visual imagery, it describes their mutual origins in
nature. This entire direction in design suggests the
development of new paradigms in the building arts
that are based on ecological models.
But there here are also obstacles to this objective.
Since our society has no collectively shared cosmology
or religious associations with nature — of the kind, for
example, that built the Celtic monuments of Wiltshire
or rock cut temples of Ajanta — designers of today's
environment cannot rely on a consensus iconography
for communication. At the same time, the earth and
sun are still universal symbols and the global aware-
ness of ecology has become a motivating psychologi-
cal force in the development of a post-industrial
version of Jung's "collective unconscious." In this
context, landscape becomes the world's most potent
source of symbolism.
Whereas the term folding in architecture seems to
suggest a design process of methodical, geometry-
driven, formal strategies; the notion of passages is
intended to describe a mutational, organic, and infor-
mal set of connections between buildings and land-
scape. For example, this concept might take the form
of a series of lateral, informational walls that can be
distributed over a land parcel in both an orderly and
random way, allowing roof structures and the
surrounding context to casually bridge and/or pene-
trate the spaces between the partitions. This approach
creates great flexibility in the orientation of sheltered
services, as the covered areas can be distributed arbi-
trarily Taken to its potential artistic extreme, it can
completely break down the established definition of
where architecture begins and landscape leaves off
One major problem is trying to apply the theory of
passages to a standard formula for highrise architec-
ture. When the cost of real estate is the determining
factor in ecological and aesthetic decisions, the idea of
an office tower as the product of such nature-oriented
design features as "fluidity, indeterminacy, and
chance" is hard to sell. On the other hand, there is the
possibility of interpreting large civic structures as
heavily vegetated microcosms of their regions —
taking cues from the Japanese concept of "borrowed
scenery" — where they become tableaux of other
places, or contemporary equivalents of the Gardens of
Babylon. As a footnote to this issue of highrise
construction, there is now a question of the viability
of skyscrapers, since this building type has generally
proven to be the most anti-ecological in terms of its
use of resources and choice of construction technol-
ogy. In fact, environmental protection laws may ulti-
mately prohibit all high rise development in favor of
lower height and clustered buildings, or mostly
underground architecture.
Passages is a theory endeavoring to chart a carto-
graphical route through new and sometimes conflict-
ing territories. While there is plenty of platitudinous
rhetoric now advocating integrated systems, the
evidence on a vast majority of architects' and land-
scape architects' drawing boards reflects the same
scenario of two cautious protagonists publicly
professing a sympathy for collaboration; but, behind
the scenes, jockeying for a position of aesthetic
supremacy. Hopefully, by using the notion of passages
as a critical tool and premise for revised thinking
about the relationship between architecture and land-
scape, it can be viewed as a means of reversing anti-
ecological and unproductive conventions in the
building arts.
The present Age of Ecology is, like the spirit of
passages, a critical point of transition and connection.
It has arrived for some architects and landscape archi-
tects like a plague on the conscience, threatening
entrenched beliefs, stylistic preferences, and routine
work habits. For others, it has become the revolution-
ary and resource-saving opportunity to develop new
technologies in the name of environmental advocacy.
For more contemplative designers, it has been seen as
the beginning of a deeper awareness of the earth and a
cause for re-thinking the relationships between archi-
tecture and landscape by blending art, philosophy,
technology, and the lessons of nature's integrated
systems. While this third group is potentially the most
productive, the challenges it faces are daunting. It
means confronting — and probably having to ulti-
mately embrace — concepts that endanger the institu-
tional frameworks of religion, economy, and politics,
not to mention most things the building arts have
been about for the last 100 years.
For example, the most disturbing of these questions
gnaw at the roots of cultural and theological develop-
ment since the birth of the world's dominant reli-
gions. How are we expected to evaluate and reconcile
65
Tliresholds 14
the environmental success of so many multi-theistic
ancient and Aboriginal civilizations — when each
element of nature was identified by its own divine
spirit — versus the dominant mono-theism of today
where an all-embracing (male) God is proclaimed in
the human image and the destruction of the earth is
viewed as a privilege of Man's sovereignty over
nature? There is substantial evidence that a distribu-
tion of responsibility among multiple gods (of both
male and female gender) related to the sun, rain, soil,
rivers, crops, etc. has been a far more productive theo-
logical vision, both ecologically and agriculturally,
than the despotic ego-centrism associated with a
single deity and the myopic delusions of "nature for
Man's convenience."
Another question is why twentieth century philosophy
and linguistic studies have produced so few persuasive
voices whose sources of signs and symbols have been
drawn from the natural environment? Instead, the
majority of leading theoreticians have scavenged
through the cacophony of pop billboards, the fetishes
of fast-food psychology, and the digitalized rituals of
consumer culture (actually, the shallowest elements of
surface structure) that block the access to
nature... while ignoring the richness of earth-centered
symbolism that lies behind this junk world detritus.
computer model, Saudi Arabian
National Museum
Where, one asks, are the theoreticians and interpreters
of an evolving eco-language? Where is the Baudrillard,
Lacan, Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Saussure, or
Lyotard of a new "terrestrial signification?"
Rather than address such broad-based philosophical
questions, much of the ecologically motivated work
today — credited as being sustainable — is nothing
more than a catalogue checklist of routine environ-
mental technology and land conservation programs
tacked onto otherwise conventionally designed build-
ings and landscapes. The green mission is essential,
the intentions are admirable; yet, the results are
boring. A more convincing approach to the fusion of
architecture and vegetation should demonstrate an
aesthetic commitment to the translation of nature's
model of "integrated systems" into innovative visual
realizations. The secret now in the building arts is to
recover those fragile threads of "connectedness" to the
earth that have been lost for most of this century. The
archetypal precedents for this approach can be found
in all of those contextuaUy harmonious ancient cities
of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, where shelter in
concert with nature has maintained its beauty and
symbolic presence over the centuries by converting a
combination of sustainability, landscape, and
communicative iconography into high art. In our
present Age of Information and Ecology, these exam-
ples have never been more relevant. Clearly, the inter-
active dialogue between architecture and landscape is
an art, as vieU as an ecological, imperative.
renderings from SITE'S Saudi Arabian
National Museum project of 1996 in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the Arriyadh
Development Corporation
67
TIjyesholds 14
mm^^^i^
Thresholds 14
^^1»roi
ijectiles
Mark Bain
The Dream
The Projectiles project is an investigation into the possibilities for active engage-
ment with the built forms of the urban landscape. The goal is to design small
scale devices which attach to the exteriors of preexisting structures, inhabit their
surface and exert influence on it. The title is suggestive of the aggress involved in
the act of placing these "agents of change."
This project was partially inspired by an investigation I made during May of
1996 in East Berlin where building facades still bare the marks of war. These
marks reveal a certain revulsion towards a last stronghold, a form of man made
erosion agitating the structure of the city. Decay is constant, a recomposing of
molecules in continual breakdown. War acts similarly, only through acceleration.
In opposition to this rule of erosion, the traditional practice of architecture
stands for the most part as a strictly additive procedure; a technique of engaging
the environment with the fabrications of the manmade. This act of building in a
sense takes on a certain literal aspect of
its own. The practice of addition and
the impulse to construct is an obvious
target for change. By inverting the
conventional idea of production, the
action reconfigures to become an exer-
cise of removal or anti-production. It is
in this process of subtraction and
16mm film still showing a house
and the effect of bactena acting
on the emulsion surface. From a
work in progress by filmmaker
Louise Bourque.
aerial map tracing possible
sites for intervention based on
existing chemical transforma-
tion already taking place in the
"shadow" of mdustrial fallout,
outlined here by a square
i
unbuilding, whether controlled or uncontrolled,
which becomes an interesting area of research.
The ideal would be the middle ground, a hybrid
technique where additive and subtractive
processes act together in a symbiotic relation of
degeneration and regeneration. Perhaps an area
where the architect and user could collaborate.
Where buildings appear and disappear, becoming
forms of permutation and progression unified in
relation to their use and the surrounding ecology.
In a sense this is the present state of the building
practice, only instead of a process of action within
the existing constructs, the city yields to the fiscal
interests of complete annihilation, the old
dissolved into the new. After more than fifty years
of preserved history, Berlin's rebirth triggers the
erasure of a past.
strangler fig enwrapping host
tree, which will eventually die
leaving its void in the fig's form
71
Thresholds 14
CO
CQ
72
The Tools
The techniques of engagement researched for this project began with the fabri-
cation of simple devices made to be propelled by the user and connect to the
intended structures. The first object was a star shape design of hardened steel
which, after being implanted, would slowly oxidize and stain the surface of
building. Following this initial model, new designs were produced. These incor-
porated magnetic material to facilitate attachment on metallic surfaces and
dagger shapes containing powder charges to aid the connection to masonry.
These implements, specifically programmed to carry out a determined long
term function, included various additions to aid in their effectiveness such as
solar-mechanical actuators, copper/magnesium charges, radio beacons, anti-
material polymers, acids, and biological specimens. The small size of these
devices, making detection difficult, allows the potential of proliferation and
accumulation. If ever discovered and removed, these delivery vehicles will still
have triggered the reformative process.
The current stage of the design has led to smaller sized delivery packages
coupled with a more powerful projection tool. This involves the use of a high
pressure air gun and 20mm sealed soft gelatin capsules similar to those manu-
factured for drug delivery systems. All the ingredients needed for developing a
micro-climate have been placed inside these "softgels." Growth mediums such as
agar, nutrients, spores and seeds are contained in a single gel sphere. When fired
at the intended target, the projectile, travelling at over 300 feet per second,
impacts the surface of the building and breaks open, releasing its contents and
creating a splattered area of approximately six to ten inches in diameter. Bacte-
ria, mold, fungi, algae, lichen, moss, cacti, ivy and other hardy species of living
organisms infiltrate the surfaces of structures, penetrating an otherwise barren
vertical landscape. This aspect of terra-forming (perhaps also seen as terror-
forming) is intended to actively engage the host structure with small scale
ecosystems that survive through atmospheric nourishment and slow dissolution
of the material structure of the building.
Star object embedded Into the
exterior wall surface of MITs
building N-51. 275 Massachu-
\^x^^ setts Avenue, Cambridge.
t
PROJECTILES
attack structures for subtraclive removal of existing
built forms
contagion imbedded into external attachments
seeding stmctuiywkh^outsijde ig^ence
imposing will on anothers imposition
slow acting cluster bombs
the propagation of a subtractive architecture
the possibilities for external sensing
electronic eyes and ears
live cultures
nodal points
beacon
Tool kit showing air guti.
magazine clip, capsule pellets,
dagger points, and star
Predicting Ruination
Mark Bain's Projectile project punctuates
the revolutionary history of anti-architecture
that includes Acconci, Archigram, Christo,
Coop Himmelblau, IVIatta Clark, Smithson
and Wodiczko, among others. His projec-
tiles close out this historical project, diffus-
ing its reactive violence with the proposition
of a weapon system that ultimately fails to
demonstrate the full spectacle of denota-
tion. His small punctures and splatters and
the subsequent virus-like processes they
inject into their architectural targets, repre-
sent a new scale and methodology of dese-
cration, marking the terminus of our
mythologies of permanence. Slowly
released over time. Bain's injected cultures
of degeneration acknowledge the waning
effectiveness of "response time" in an over-
loaded information based society where
political targets have become more difficult,
if not impossible to identify.
The radicality of this project consists of a
series of decreasing and comparative accel-
erations that liberate time. The initial speed
of the projectiles is countered by the slower
processes of decay that they inject into the
architectural surfaces under attack. These,
in turn, frame the even slower degeneration
processes already in play in the real time life
of the architecture. Through this last trans-
formation Bain's interventions approach
tainted prophecy. They "image" the future,
predicting ruination through the slightest
window of participation.
The seeming violence of this project lies
elsewhere, in those stoic, unblemished
architectural surfaces, those "missed" sites
at the limit of Bain's "strikes." Acts of accel-
eration can never be liberated from what
they leave behind: the arrogance of architec-
ture, a ruin holding off time.
-Dennis Adams.
Professor of Visual Studies, MIT
73
Thresholds 14
Calumet Canal
South Chicago, Illinois
75
TTiresholds 14
Corporeal Consciousness &
The Permeability off Space
Bath House
Master's thesis
Aspasia Maheras
The economic structure of our society requires that people
work long hours, leading to increasingly stressful lives with
few outlets for the rejuvenation of the mind and body. As a
society we have focused on acquisition and competition.
Our material possessions have take precedence over our
identities. We are disconnected from our bodies and
minds, and on the occasion where the spirit is willing there
is no outlet. Within the urban environment, places that
offer tranquility, rest and relaxation are limited. This thesis
explores architecture as a means of allowing the visitor to
enter the realms of relaxation, contemplation, and rejuve-
nation both physically and mentally. My intention is to
create a series of spaces where the experience promotes an
understanding of the body's relationship to the mind and
the environment.
I have chosen a bath house to exemplify this.
Historically, the bath house has offered a ritual that fiilfills
the needs of the body, mind and spirit. In many countries,
bath houses continue to offer social interaction and relax-
ation. However, placing a bath house in the United States
inherently contains many issues besides the experiences
specifically designed for rejuvenation. It engages not only
our society's image of the bath house but more fundamen-
tally also a collective understanding of our own bodies.
"Man articulates the world through his body... man
is not a dualistic being whom spirit and flesh are
essentially distinct, but a living corporeal being,
active in the world."
Tadao Ando
The body is not part of nature,
but rather, it is sexualized, ?^
popularized
by the media.
*«
77
1 urcsijoias 14
"The role that bathing plays within a culture
reveals the culture's attitude toward human
relaxation. It is a measure of how far individual
well-being is regarded as an indispensable part of
community life."
— Sigfried Giedion
In our repressive culture the body is considered taboo — it
must be covered up and hidden. The body is not viewed as a
part of nature, but rather, it is sexualized, popularized by the
media. The bath house is steeped in rich social history in
many countries. But here in the United States, the history of
the bath house began as a way to mentally and physically
cleanse the poor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
More recently, during the 1970's and early 1980's, the bath
house was considered by some the playground for homosex-
ual promiscuity before the AIDS epidemic. Thus, for many
the bath house today remains decadent and disreputable.
The site is New York City's Lower East Side, specifically
between 258 10th Street and 417 9th Street. Together these
addresses make up a lot that is 25 feet by 200 feet. This
particular location has the potential to serve different classes
and cultures. Presently, a Turkish and Russian bath house
exists at 258 10th Street. However, it remains dense and dark,
like its surroundings.
Inserting a bath house into a densely populated urban envi-
ronment allows it to become an easily accessible part of the
community, with entrances on both sides of the block. The
new bath house is a public facility, maintained and operated
by a private foundation.
model photos show views to
massage room [above top), e
(above bottom) and cafe (ngt
longitudinal section drawing
We become regularly disconnected from our
bodies and minds,
and on the occasion where the
spirit is willing must find an outlet.
Thresholds 14
Corporeal consciousness indicates
i
a simultaneous awareness of
both Bduy and mind.
jfa-
81
Thresholds 14
authors
Paul Carter is Senior Research Fellow. University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor. Faculty of Constructed Environment Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology. He Is author of The Road to Botany Bay (Knopf, 1988] and most recently The Lie of the
Land (Faber & Faber. 1996].
Charies Anderson is an artist. His solo work is currently exhibited in Melbourne. Brisbane and Tokyo. He specializes in collabora-
tions that critically intervene to reformulate the temporal and spatial hierarchies that characterize interior and urban design.
His dis/appearance collaboration with Paul Carter commenced in 1989.
B2 Ignasi de Sola-Morales is professor of history and theory at the Barcelona School of Architecture
Christine McGrath completed her Master of Architecture degree at MIT in February of 1997. Previously she received a Bachelor
of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994.
James K. Casper completed his Master of Architecture degree at MIT in February of 1997. Previously, he received a Bachelor of
Science in Environmental Design from the University of Oklahoma in 1993.
Kristina Hill is a Planning Professor at MIT.
Panayiota Pyla is a current degree candidate for a Ph.D. in History. Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture at MIT
Azin Valy and Suzan Wines are both graduates of The Cooper Union School of Architecture. They recently formed a partnership
called l-Beam Design in New York City.
James Wines is President of SITE (Sculpture in the Environment] Environmental Design in New Yori<City.
Mark Bain is an artist living in the Boston area whose work incorporates a variety of scales and mediums. Currently he is a degree
candidate for a M.S. in Visual Studies offered through the visual arts department at MIT. He can be contacted through
simulux@mitedu.
Aspasia Maheras completed her Master of Architecture degree at MIT in February of 1997 Previously, she received a Bachelor of
Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art in 1991.
Phillip Jones is a painter and photographer based in Somerville, Massachusetts. His photographs in the Industrial Nocturnes series
were recently exhibited in a solo show in Boston.
photo credits
p 19 photo by Lewis Baltz, "Alton Road at Murphy Road looking towards Newport Center."
p 20 Toyo Ito, Shanghai.
p 21 interchange in Toronto photo by Lockwood Survey Corporation Ltd.
Shinchi Ogawa, rest stop,
p 22 Zahera Foring Office, terminal Yokohama.
Jean Nouvel, Fachada Galerias Lafayette, Berlin.
p 23 photo by David Plowden, "East of the Loop."
p 25 photo by Jannes Linders.
p 34 hurricane from McHarg, Ian, Design with Nature, New York: Wiley & Sons 1992.
p 40 photo by Mark Wexler/ Woodfm Camp & Assoc, in One Earth, San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1990.
p 42 photo by Michael Ormerod.
p 49 article and ad from New York Times, November 19, 1991.
p 50 diagram from Doxiadis Associates Brochure, 1965.
p 51 world map from Doxiadis, C. A., Ecology and Ekistics, Boulder: Westview Press, 1977.
p 52 cisterns from Doxiadis Associates Brochure, 1965.
p 62 Max Reinhardt Haus project by Peter Eisenman from Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works. Victoria,
Australia: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 1995.
p 73 Bomarzo image from Schuyt, Michael, et. al. Fantastic Architecture. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc. 1980.
back cover photo "Manhattan" by U.S. Air Force.
83
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